■ TAIEX shoots up
Share prices closed sharply higher in active trade yesterday, rising 1.47 percent on Wall Street's gains after the US Federal Reserve appeared to soften its stance on future interest rate hikes, dealers said.
The easing of concerns over interest rates encouraged the region as a whole, with the market staging a relief rally on the Fed lead and the central bank's own modest tightening of monetary policy on Thursday, they said.
The TAIEX rose 97.02 points to 6,704.41, on turnover of NT$115.80 billion (US$3.55 billion).
Investors were quick to get into the market, building on Thursday's upturn as they welcomed the Fed's more guarded statement on the outlook for inflation, Fubon Securities Investment Services Co (富邦投顧) manager Daniel Tseng (曾建詮) said.
Tseng said the market should now be on firmer ground, with the uncertainties over interest rates and domestic political problems resolved for the near term at least.
■ New FSC members appointed
The Executive Yuan announced late on Thursday that it had appointed three new policy-making members at the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), according to a Government Information Office press release.
The three new members, Shih Jun-ji (施俊吉), Lin Kuo-chuan (林國全) and Chang Shih-chieh (張士傑), will take over from Huang Hsieh-hua (黃顯華), Frank Ling (凌氤寶) and Amy Chin (金文悅), whose tenure expired yesterday.
Shih, with a PhD in economics at National Taiwan University, is a research fellow at Research Center for Humanities and Social Science at Academia Sinica and has expertise in the fields of financial reform and telecommunication policy.
Lin is a professor at the Department of Law in National Chengchi University and specializes in financial and economic law. He has a doctorate of law from Kobe University in Japan.
Chang, an insurance expert, serves as a professor at the Department of Risk Management and Insurance. Chang holds a PhD in statistics from the University of Wisconsin.
■ Center helps water firms
The Research and Development Center on Deep Ocean Water has helped several local companies to break through operational bottlenecks, and one of the facilities in Hualien County is expected to become fully operational by next month, a spokesman of the Water Resources Agency (WRA) said yesterday.
The R&D center, cosponsored by the WRA under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Industrial Technology Research Institute, began operations on June 1, with the aim of offering consultancy in technology and facility establishment.
The official said that the facility -- set up by Taiwan Fertilizer Co (台肥) -- will pump up between 2,400 tonnes and 2,600 tonnes of ocean water per day from 710m below the surface to produce bottled drinking water.
He added that the center will assist in the construction of at least six more facilities located along the nation's eastern coastline in the coming years -- one in Ilan County, two in Hualien and three in Taitung County.
■ NT dollar firms up
The New Taiwan dollar gained against its US counterpart yesterday in active trading, gaining NT$0.221 to close at NT$32.399 in Taipei.
The local currency was supported by interest-rate hikes both locally and in the US, as well as strong foreign fund inflows, which bought a net NT$18.04 billion (US$557.4 million) of Taiwanese stocks, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
RSS