■ Expansion postponed
Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), Taiwan's third-largest flat-panel display maker, said it will postpone a NT$220 billion (US$6.61 billion) expansion project by six months because of unclear trends in the liquid crystal-display television industry.
"We're waiting to see which large-sized television dimensions will become mainstream before deciding on what kind of plant to build," the company's chief financial officer James Wu (巫俊毅) said.
Chunghwa Picture originally planned to start construction of its first plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park in January next year.
A 7.5-generation plant will cost around NT$100 billion to build, while an 8-generation plant will cost around NT$120 billion, Wu said.
■ More income taxes collected
The treasury took in NT$212.8 billion (US$6.4 billion) worth of taxes last month, a 17.6 rise increase from a year ago, driven by increase in income tax, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
The income tax paid by taxpayers last month totaled NT$123.6 billion, up by 32.3 percent from last year, said Hsu Kuo-chung (許國忠), director of the ministry's statistics department. Income from securities transaction tax dropped by 21.2 percent to NT$4.8 billion last month due to the weakening stock transactions, Hsu said. The average daily stock turnover last month stood at NT$66 billion, lower than NT$83.1 billion from a year ago.
For the first nine months of the year, tax revenues hit NT$1,268.4 billion, up by NT$144.3 billion, or 12.8 percent from the same period last year, the ministry said. The figure accounts for 91.9 percent of the target set for the whole year, it said.
■ Energy consumption rises
Taiwan's energy consumption rose for a fourth month in August because of increased demand from technology companies.
Energy use rose 5.8 percent from a year earlier to the equivalent of 9.83 million kiloliters (61.8 million barrels) of oil in August, the Bureau of Energy said yesterday. Manufacturers and other industrial companies accounted for 56 percent of consumption.
"Demand for consumer electronics increased significantly," pushing up energy consumption by Taiwan's technology companies, the bureau said in an e-mailed report. For the first eight months of the year, energy consumption totaled the equivalent of 71.2 million kiloliters of oil, an increase of 2.8 percent from a year earlier, the bureau said. Information and electronics consumed 17 percent more energy than a year earlier during the period.
■ Chunghwa posts profit
Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan's largest provider of telephone services, had an 8.5 percent increase in third-quarter profit.
Net income at the Taipei-based company rose to NT$14 billion (US$420 million) from NT$12.9 billion a year earlier, according to figures derived by subtracting first-half earnings from January-September figures provided by the company. For the first nine months, profit fell to NT$38.3 billion from NT$39.3 billion a year earlier, the company said.
Sales last month rose 3.8 percent from a year earlier to NT$16 billion, the statement said.
Chunghwa Telecom has more than 210,000 users for high-speed mobile-phone services, which allows faster downloads of data and images from the Internet and offers video and music downloads, after starting the services in July, said a company official.
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