Tax revenues rose last month
The nation's treasury took in NT$86.5 billion (US$2.63 billion) in tax revenues last month, up by 3.7 percent from a year ago, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Among the main tax categories, the biggest increase was recorded in income tax revenues, which rose NT$5.1 billion, or 13 percent, to NT$44.56 billion.
Revenues from the securities transaction tax dropped by 10 percent to NT$6.3 billion last month because unstable domestic politics weakened stock transactions, said Hsu Ray-lin (許瑞琳), deputy director of the ministry's statistics department.
The average daily stock turn-over last month stood at NT$75.3 billion compared with NT$79.6 billion recorded a year ago.
For the first eight months of the year, tax revenues reached NT$1.08 trillion, up 2.2 percent year on year. The figure accounts for 73.4 percent of the government's target set for the whole year, Hsu said.
Mergers reach NT$268.30bn
Since the Company Merger Law (公司合併法) was put into practice in 2002, the total value of all mergers has reached NT$268.38 billion (US$8.18 billion), the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said yesterday.
The CEPD said that 616 corporate mergers or acquisitions have been reported during the period.
The officials said small-sized and medium-sized companies that have paid-in capital of under NT$500 million have the highest merger rates at 54.2 percent, followed by companies with paid-in capital of over NT$2 billion at 14.4 percent.
In terms of the sectors involved in the total mergers, officials said mechanical engineering accounted for 9.6 percent, electronics 8.4 percent, food 8.4 percent and communications 7.2 percent.
Ericsson chooses Taiwan
Swedish telecom giant Ericsson has chosen Taiwan as the headquarters for its mobile telecommunications technology development unit in the greater China area, a spokeswoman for Ericsson Taiwan said yesterday.
"Greater China houses important customers for Ericsson. So, Ericsson Mobile Platform [EMP] has established its greater China headquarters here to service our customers in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China," the spokeswoman said.
EMP is a business unit within Ericsson charged with developing and providing various systems for mobile phone networks.
The greater China EMP headquarters now has 22 research and development staffers, the spokeswoman said.
Big German presence planned
Taiwan is expected to be the second-largest exhibitor at the Automechanika 2006 show, which will be held in Germany from Sept. 12 to Sept. 17, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) announced in a report that was released yesterday.
A total of 550 companies from Taiwan will take part in Automechanika 2006 in Frankfurt -- the leading international trade fair for the automotive industry -- making Taiwan the second-largest exhibitor this year after Italy, TAITRA officials said.
More than 4,500 companies from 72 countries have registered to take part in the show, which features the state-of-the-art automobile products, techniques and trade information in an exhibition area of 27,900m2, according to TAITRA officials.
NT dollar continues slide
The New Taiwan dollar has continued to lose ground against its US counterpart.
It declined NT$0.020 to close at NT$32.880 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$629 million.
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