Tax income up 2.6 percent
The central government's tax income saw 2.6 percent year-on-year growth to NT$102.2 billion (US$3.32 billion) last month, Ministry of Finance figures showed yesterday.
The ministry attributed last month’s growth to tax revenues from securities transactions, which saw the biggest year-on-year growth last month, gaining 29.6 percent to reach NT$11.5 billion after capital inflows flooded into the local stock market.
Tax income in the first four months accumulated to NT$406.2 billion, or 3.6 percent year-on-year growth, the ministry’s latest figures show.
Land incremental tax incomes, however, saw the biggest decline year-on-year in the first four months, dropping 26.4 percent to NT$19.7 billion amid rising land tax reports, some of which were small and tax-free, the ministry said.
Life insurance firms fined
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Thursday imposed a NT$3.6 million fine on Kuo Hua Life Insurance Co (國華人壽) for its failure to meet the capital reserve requirements in 2005.
The insurer’s former actuary Tsai Sheng-kuo (蔡聲國) is barred from working in his profession permanently.
The commission also imposed a fine of NT$1.2 million on Glo Bal Life Insurance Co (國寶人壽) and suspended its two former actuaries Wang Ming-hui (王明輝) and Yu Shao-hsian (余紹賢) for six months.
Meanwhile, the commission fined Chinfon Bank (慶豐銀行) NT$2 million for negligence in internal control after retired bank clerk Chao Kuo-chyang (趙國強) was found guilty of theft from clients’ safe deposit boxes.
UMC sales reach NT$8.52bn
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) said yesterday its sales rose to NT$8.52 billion last month from NT$8.5 billion last month and were up 4.79 percent year-on-year.
Parent sales in the first four months totaled NT$32.52 billion, up 4.39 percent from the year before, the world’s second-largest wafer foundry said.
UMC said last month that its wafer shipments in the second quarter were expected to increase 10 percent from the first quarter.
Chi Mei units secure loans
Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子), the nation’s second-largest liquid-crystal display maker, said two of its subsidiaries secured US$1 billion in syndicated loans to help fund operations and expand locally and in China.
Leadtek Global Group Ltd (利達環球), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tainan-based Chi Mei, obtained a three-year US$870 million loan from 22 banks lead by Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行), Chi Mei said in a statement yesterday. The loan includes a provision for a two-year extension upon the agreement of all parties, it said.
Chi Mei Lighting Technology Corp (奇力光電), a Tainan-based subsidiary producing light-emitting diodes (LEDs), signed a separate five-year, NT$4 billion loan from 12 banks led by First Commercial Bank (第一銀行), the statement said.
Subprime losses 'very small'
Taiwanese banks’ losses from US subprime-related business amounted to about US$1.25 billion at the end of March, said Hu Sheng-cheng (胡勝正), chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission.
Subprime-related investments by Taiwanese financial companies totaled about US$3 billion by the end of March, representing just a “very small” portion of total assets, the commission said in a statement on its Web site that cited a speech by Hu in the US.
The impact on Taiwan of the subprime crisis is much less than for the US and Europe, the statement said.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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