Shares close flat
Taiwanese shares closed flat yesterday, as profit-taking reversed earlier gains posted on the back of a Wall Street rally, dealers said.
The weighted TAIEX index fell 5.02 points, or 0.07 percent, to 6,949.08 on turnover of NT$231.19 billion (US$7.26 billion).
Losers led gainers by 1,255 to 959 with 140 stocks unchanged.
The tourism sector fell 2.49 percent, plastics shed 1.07 percent while electronics were up 0.11 percent.
“There was profit-taking by investors as the index was around the key 7,000 level … Turnover is also huge which indicates that there are more investors looking to sell,” said Andrew Teng (鄧安瀾) of Taiwan International Securities Corp (金鼎證券).
Chipmaker ARM optimistic
ARM Holdings Plc said it expects its semiconductors to be included in as many as 6 million low-cost notebooks next year as the UK chip designer grabs share of the fastest-growing computer market.
“We have a loose one-in-five target and we can guess volume will be around 30 million units,” chief executive officer Warren East said in an interview in Taipei yesterday.
ARM, whose products are used in video-game consoles, cameras, home appliances and Apple Inc’s iPhones, said first-quarter sales fell 10 percent, outperforming a 20 percent decline for the overall chip industry.
The market for smartphones, Internet-accessible handsets, would rise 15 percent this year, compared with a 10 percent drop in the wider handset market, East said.
Tax take falls
The national treasury saw a sharp decline in personal and corporate income tax revenues as a result of the economic slowdown, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement yesterday.
Personal income tax amounted to NT$105 billion, down 4.5 percent from NT$110 billion a year earlier, while corporate income tax dropped 28.56 percent to NT$167 billion, the ministry’s preliminary account showed.
The ministry attributed the slumping tax revenues to the economic woes, adding that GDP growth was 0.06 percent last year, from 5.7 percent a year earlier.
A total of 5,310 taxpayers asked to postpone their owed tax payment, which totaled NT$17.21 billion, the statement said.
CPC sets finish date for cracker
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said that it expects to complete a NT$30 billion unit at its biggest refinery before the end of 2012 to boost production of auto fuels.
The residue fluid catalytic cracker will be able convert residue oil into higher value refined products such as gasoline and diesel, the company said in a statement yesterday.
The unit will be able to process 80,000 barrels of fuel a day, the refiner said at a press conference.
The project is part of CPC’s plan to spend more than NT$46 billion upgrading its Talin (大林) refinery in Kaohsiung City.
NT dollar drops sharply
The New Taiwan dollar fell the most in almost seven weeks on speculation that the central bank intervened to help exporters ride out the global recession.
The NT dollar slid 0.5 percent to end at NT$32.534 by the 4pm closing, Taipei Forex Inc said. The currency fell as much as 1.2 percent, after climbing 0.3 percent.
“It’s a fairly aggressive intervention,” said Daniel Soh, an economist at Forecast Pte in Singapore. “But I’m not surprised though, as they often embark on such smoothing operations.”
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