Taiwan aims to double in five years the amount of funds raised in the country each year by foreign companies, as part of its plan to become a regional fundraising and asset-management hub, its top financial regulator said.
The nation will revise 143 outdated rules as it helps local financial institutions develop into up to three regional players, Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Kong Jaw-sheng (
"Openness, creativity and efficiency are our principles," Kong said after meeting with more than 100 executives, government officials and scholars at a service industry forum.
Contribution
The country plans to double annual fund-raising by foreign companies to NT$35 billion (US$1 billion) in 2008 from NT$17.5 billion at the end of last year, said Wu Tang-chieh (
The combined assets of the nation's financial institutions are forecast to rise more than 30 percent to NT$43.8 trillion by 2008, with overseas investors holding a quarter of the nation's stocks in terms of market value, up from 18.8 percent, Wu said.
The commission's plans to achieve its targets include revising tax rules on financial products, easing restrictions on fund flows to China for local companies with operations there and introducing new investment products, such as interest-rate futures, the commission said in a statement.
The government is considering making it easier for local companies to send money to China to fund their operations there, a Chinese-language business daily reported earlier yesterday.
Under existing rules, any company which wants to send more than NT$500,000 (US$14,750) to China must get approval from the island's Mainland Affairs Council, the paper said.
The inconvenience caused by the restriction means companies have been reluctant to remit profits earned in China back to Taiwan, the paper said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day