■ TAIEX drops on Vista news
Shares fell to a two-month low yesterday, led by declines in technology stocks following a drop on Wall Street overnight. The TAIEX dropped 66.77 points, or 1 percent, to 6,391.26, its lowest closing level since Jan. 23. Microsoft Corp's announcement that it will postpone the release of its new Windows operating system, Vista, until January weighed on sentiment in the Taiwan market, with its heavy concentration of tech shares. "Microsoft's decision to delay the launch of Vista also had a negative impact on local technology stocks," said Derek Lam, a senior trader at Daiwa Securities SMBC-Cathay Co (大和國泰證券). The technology sector fell 1.4 percent as a whole. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world's largest contract chipmaker by revenue, fell 1.5 percent to NT$59.6, while global No.2 United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) dropped 0.8 percent at NT$18.95.
■ Circuit sector on the rise
Taiwan's integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing sector is expected to recover its momentum this year and see its production value increase to NT$671 billion (US$20.61 billion), the Industrial Technology Research Institute's (ITRI, 工研院) Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center forecast yesterday. The projected figure will represent a rise of 14.2 percent from last year, when the production value of the sector stood at just NT$587.4 billion, a decrease of 5.9 percent compared with 2004. The ITRI also predicted that the total production value of Taiwan's IC industry will expand to NT$1.29 trillion this year, up 15.9 percent from last year. The production value of contract chip making is likely to increase 19.1 percent to NT$445 billion this year, according to the ITRI. The production value of IC design is expected to amount to NT$320 billion in 2006, up 12.3 percent over last year, while the production value of IC packaging will reach NT$220 billion and that of IC testing will reach NT$85.2 billion.
■ Card problem can be solved
Taiwan may be able to resolve its rising credit card problem in the first half of the year as the recent debt increase has shown signs of slowing, said Lin Chung-cheng (林忠正), spokesman for the Financial Supervisory Commission. "The pace of debt accumulation hasn't been as fast as some people think, so it's manageable," Lin told reporters on the sidelines of an investor conference in Taipei. "It's impossible for the credit card problem to disrupt our financial system." Rising defaults forced Taiwan banks to write off NT$210.8 billion (US$6.5 billion) of bad loans and card purchases last year, up 30 percent from 2004, according to the commission's statistics. As of the end of February, about 519,000 people in Taiwan had overdue debt on credit and cash cards, compared with about 510,000 a month earlier, Lin said. About 80 percent of the total owed NT$500,000 or less, he said.
■ Quanta takes iPod orders
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達電腦) has obtained orders to make iPod music players for Apple Computer Inc, taking business away from Inventec Appliance Corp (英華達), the Economic Daily News reported, without saying how it got the information. Quanta will start delivering iPods to Apple from next month, the Taipei-based newspaper said. Both Quanta and Inventec declined to comment on the report, the paper said.
■ NT dollar declines
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