The Ministry of Finance said yesterday that the nation’s tax revenues had increased from last year after Fitch Ratings on Thursday retained its negative outlook on the local economy amid concerns over the nation’s deteriorating fiscal conditions.
The UK-based agency lowered its outlook rating on Taiwan to negative from stable because of the nation’s soaring debt and declining tax revenues after the government adopted tax incentives to help Taiwan weather the global financial storm.
The ministry said in a statement that in the first eight months, tax revenues increased by NT$34.3 billion (US$1.1 billion) from a year ago, indicating that the counter-cyclical measures adopted by the government last year have improved the nation’s fiscal conditions.
The ministry reiterated that the budget deficit was a result of more capital expenditure to help finance the nation’s infrastructure construction, saying that the balance of current accounts last year was NT$99.2 billion, higher than the NT$67.7 billion recorded in 2004.
To stimulate the economy, Taiwan has since January last year cut inheritance tax to a flat 10 percent from a range of between 2 percent and 50 percent and recently lowered corporate income tax from 25 percent to 17 percent.
Vincent Ho (何永燊), associate director of Fitch’s Asia-Pacific sovereign ratings team, said on Thursday at a forum in Taipei that the Taiwanese government’s debt was skyrocketing and that fiscal consolidation in the medium-term may not be feasible.
In response, the ministry said that as of the end of August, the national debt stood at NT$4.88 trillion, which accounted for 37.4 percent of GNP in the previous three years, which is under the legal ceiling of 48 percent.
Taiwan’s economy expanded 12.53 percent year-on-year in the second quarter and the government predicted that it would grow 8.24 percent for the full year the ministry 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],”
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