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.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained