Treasury collects record taxes
The nation's treasury took in NT$109.5 billion (US$3.3 billion) in taxes last month, up by 17.1 percent from a year ago, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
The biggest increase came from securities transaction tax revenues, which skyrocketed by NT$13.4 billion, or 232 percent, from the same period last year to NT$19.1 billion, setting a new record in the ministry's history, said Lee Li-shu (李麗雪), director of the statistics department.
This is a result of heated trans-actions in the local bourse, driven by international capital inflow and the government's beneficial policies, she said.
Income from value-added tax rose by 9.9 percent to NT$47.2 billion, while income tax shrank by 95.2 percent to NT$100 million due to increasing tax rebates.
For the first seven months of the year, tax revenues totaled NT$1.07 trillion, up by 7.8 percent year-on-year, the data showed. The figure accounted for 66.3 percent of the government target.
UMC sales up last month
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) said yesterday sales rose 14.86 percent to NT$10.05 billion (US$303 million) last month from NT$8.75 billion in June and up 9.24 percent year-on-year.
Sales for the first seven months of the year amounted to NT$58.17 billion, down 1.96 percent from the year-earlier period, said the world's second-largest wafer foundry.
Stopping short of directly forecasting sales for the third quarter to September, UMC said at an Aug. 1 investor conference that wafer shipments are expected to rise by 20 percent in the current quarter from the second.
The company also expects its third-quarter average selling price to remain flat in US dollar terms.
Chi Mei sales double
Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子), the nation's second-largest liquid-crystal-display maker, said that sales last month more than doubled.
Revenue, excluding sales from affiliates, rose to NT$25.5 billion (US$775 million), the Tainan-based company said in a stock-exchange filing yesterday. Chi Mei reported sales of NT$11.6 billion last year.
The company posted sales of NT$22.3 billion in June.
CLA to promote internships
Taiwan plans to spend NT$259 million (US$7.9 million) to raise employment prospects for those suffering the nation's highest jobless rate, people aged from 15 to 24.
The Council of Labor Affairs will work with 1,424 companies to provide six-month internships to 15,000 people in the age group to "prepare them for the job market" and "remove obstacles preventing them from finding jobs," an e-mail statement quoted Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) as saying.
The 15-to-24 age group's jobless rate is 2.6 times the nation's average, according to the statement. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.90 percent in June from 3.95 percent in May, seasonally adjusted, the government's statistics bureau said on July 23.
Ten-year bonds fall
Taiwan's 10-year government bonds fell on speculation that a central bank sale of short-term debt tomorrow will push up money market rates. The currency was little changed.
The central bank will auction NT$100 billion (US$3 billion) in 364-day certificates of deposit, the first sale of the securities since July 20, when it issued debt at an average rate of 2.526 percent. Sales of the certificates drain funds from the banking system and may help increase money market rates.
The New Taiwan dollar was little changed at NT$32.895 against the US currency, according to Taipei Forex Inc, where the turn-over was US$597 million yesterday.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to