■ Foreign cash flows in
Taiwan saw sizzling foreign investments for the first 11 months of the year with 1,619 foreign direct investments valued at US$11.93 billion, a jump of 280.93 percent from a year ago, the Investment Commission said yesterday.
"The figures showed the effectiveness of the government's efforts in attracting foreign investment," the commission said in a statement.
The top three industries that foreign firm investments focused on were electronics parts manufacturing, banking and retail and wholesale, the commission said.
In the same period, local companies applied for 427 outbound investments (except China) worth US$3.13 billion, a 32.58 percent increase from a year ago, commission statistics showed.
Investment fever in China is still running high, with Taiwanese companies applying for 983 investments worth US$6.41 billion in the January-November period, a 13.8 percent increase from the same period last year, statistics showed.
■ Gas, diesel prices rise
Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), the nation's second-biggest fuel supplier, raised gasoline and diesel prices for the second time this month, matching a move by larger rival Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中油).
Domestic wholesale gasoline prices increased NT$0.3 a liter and diesel climbed by NT$0.2, effective at 9am, Formosa Petrochemical said.
■ Hearings on interest tax
The Ministry of Finance will hold public hearings from next week on a proposed 10 percent tax on interest on bonds, repurchase agreements, securitized products and commercial paper.
"This is a proposal that has been discussed for years and is now being suggested by the Financial Supervisory Commission," Tsai Bi-chen (蔡碧珍), a section chief of the ministry's Taxation Agency, said yesterday. "It's still at an initial stage and nothing is final."
The Cabinet is trying to increase tax revenue as part of a bid to balance the budget by 2011.
But associations of securities houses, life insurers and banks, as well as investment trusts and consulting companies, plan to lobby against the tax because it will increase the cost of raising capital.
■ PC sales expected to jump
Personal computer sales in Taiwan are likely to rise by about 10 percent next year, the chief operating officer of Microsoft's branch in Taiwan said.
Microsoft Taiwan Corp's Davis Tsai (蔡恩全) said the planned launch of the company's Windows Vista operating system would help PC sales reach 2.2 million to 2.5 million units next year, compared with more than 2 million expected for this year.
The PC sales total includes desktop and notebook computers.
The current estimate for PC sales growth in Taiwan next year is 5 percent, Tsai said.
■ Google, Chunghwa offer service
Google Inc and Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Taiwan's largest provider of telephone services, will offer a mobile search service and share the revenue, Chunghwa said.
"We'll offer a search engine on our Emome platform, and in the long run will have other co-operation," Chunghwa spokeswoman Shen Fu-fu (沈馥馥) said in a telephone interview.
Emome is the brand name of Chunghwa's mobile Internet service accessed from cellphones.
Google will announce details today, according to the text of an invitation from Chunghwa.
■ NT dollar climbs
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, advancing NT$0.127 to close at NT$32.617 on the Taipei Forex Inc. Turnover was US$796 million.
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