Business Briefs

■ TAIEX down on rate concerns
Shares ended marginally lower yesterday, giving up their early gains after Wall Street rose overnight, as concerns that the Bank of Japan would raise rates tomorrow weighed on regional markets.
The TAIEX edged down 5.04 points, or 0.1 percent, to 6,634.09.
Turnover rose to NT$82.6 billion (US$2.58 billion) from the previous session's NT$67.77 billion. Decliners outpaced gainers 582 to 325; 156 stocks closed unchanged.
In addition to worries about Japan's monetary policy, investors began to take profit as the index approached the 6,800-point level, traders said.
The index will likely trade between 6,500 and 6,700 in coming sessions as investors await the earnings results of major US firmspanieslike IBM and Apple, they said.

■ Cabinet approves FTA
The Cabinet announced yesterday that it had approved a free trade agreement (FTA) signed between Taiwan and Nicaragua and will refer the document to the Legislative Yuan for ratification.
Taiwan, which has signed FTAs with Panama, Guatemala and Nicaragua, is currently engaged in FTA talks with several other Central American nations, including El Salvador and Honduras.

■ Number of broadband users up
The number of broadband Internet subscribers in the country totaled 4.2 million in the first quarter of the year, up 80,000 or 2 percent, from the previous quarter, according to tallies released yesterday by the Institute for Information Industry.
Of the total, 3.78 million were xDSL users, with household subscribers accounting for 93 percent and business subscribers accounting for 7 percent. The figure represented an increase of 90,000 subscribers, or 3 percent, over the previous quarter.
The figures also showed that 61 percent of the xDSL subscribers were using services with a downstream bandwidth of above 1.5M, while 39 percent were using services with a downstream bandwidth of below 1.5M.
Subscribers of optical fiber networking services amounted to 33,000 in the first quarter of the year, up 5,000 or 17 percent, over the previous quarter, according to the institute.

■ China chipmakers may fail
Despite soaring demand for ICs, more than half of China's chipmakers are projected to fail because many lack partners and the manufacturing expertise to compete in the semiconductor market, according to a report released by the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).
"Less than 50 percent will succeed -- it could be only 40 percent [that will succeed]," Samuel Ni, manager of market research at SEMI China (Shanghai), said in the report released on Tuesday.
China currently has more than 30 fabs, including older plants, SEMI said. There are some eight to nine 200mm fabs operating in China and only one 300mm plant in the nation, which is owned by Chinese silicon foundry provider Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (中芯), it said.

■ New CAL cargo service coming
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said yesterday that it would launch its Taipei-Hanoi cargo services next Wednesday.
CAL added that it would be the only Taiwan-based carrier offering dedicated cargo services to both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, using a Boeing 747-400 freighter aircraft initially on the once-a- week service.

■ NT dollar slips
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.032 to close at NT$32.487 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$940 million.