Airlines increase surcharges
China Airlines (華航), EVA Airways Corp (長榮) and Taiwan’s other carriers will raise surcharges on overseas flights by 15 percent because of higher fuel costs.
Levies on flights to Europe and the US will increase by US$13 to US$97.50, while for short-haul trips they will climb US$5 to US$37.50, the Civil Aeronautics Administration said on its Web site yesterday. The charges, to be imposed by all Taiwanese international airlines, will start on July 15.
Taiwanese carriers are raising surcharges for the fourth time this year because of rising fuel costs. The price of jet kerosene, most Asian carriers’ biggest expense, doubled in Singapore trading in the past year.
TTL to keep prices steady
New Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp (TTL, 台灣菸酒公司) chairman Duan Wei (韋伯韜) said yesterday that the state-run company’s prices had not risen recently and that the company would strive to keep prices steady under his leadership.
Wei made the remarks in a changeover ceremony presided over by Deputy Finance Minister Liu Teng-cheng (劉燈城), at which TTL senior vice president Hsu An-hsuan (徐安旋) also became the company president.
In his address, Liu said the only way the state-run company could maintain stable operational growth and achieve sustainable development was privatization.
Wei, former director-general of the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, said that TTL was a traditional company and a part of the nation’s history, adding that all its employees had a “sense of mission.”
Wei said he would continue to move in the directions set out by the company’s former chairmen, including his predecessor, Martin Tsai (蔡木霖).
Noting that the company currently has 6,600 employees, Wei said he would work to take care of them and to increase their number to past levels, when the company had more than 10,000 people on its payroll.
Wei said that under his leadership, the company would not rashly raise prices and rather continue to strive to establish an illustrious track record by working to maintain reasonable prices.
Chunghwa Picture shares up
Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd (中華映管), the nation’s third-biggest maker of liquid-crystal displays (LCD), rose in Taipei trading after the company said it plans to buy back 4.38 percent of its shares.
Chunghwa Picture gained 4 percent to close at NT$8.27 (US$0.27) on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the highest since Wednesday. The benchmark TAIEX index fell 1.5 percent.
The LCD maker intended to repurchase 415.5 million shares from the market at NT$5.57 to NT$14.01 each starting yesterday until Aug. 31, Taoyuan-based Chunghwa said in a filing yesterday.
Chunghwa Picture shares have fallen 26 percent this year, exceeding the 13 percent decline by the TAIEX.
China Steel sales up 35 percent
China Steel Corp (中鋼), Taiwan’s largest maker of the metal, said that sales had increased 35 percent last month from a year earlier.
Sales rose to NT$23.9 billion (US$787 million), the Kaohsiung-based company said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, without providing a comparative figure.
NT dollar slightly down
The NT dollar dropped slightly by NT$0.006 to trade at NT$30.360 against the greenback on turnover of US$749 million.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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