TAIEX closes up 0.49%
The TAIEX closed up 0.49 percent yesterday as interest was triggered by Wall Street’s gains overnight.
However, the upside was compromised by technical resistance after the index briefly breached the 9,000 point mark, dealers said.
The TAIEX rose 43.60 points to 8,991.39, off a high of 9,032.30, on turnover of NT$113.41 billion (US$3.9 billion).
A total of 2,202 stocks closed up, 2,021 finished lower, and 473 remained unchanged.
Import tariffs to be cut
Taiwan will cut import tariffs on wheat, wheat flour, milked powder and corn starch for six months.
The move is intended to help stabilize consumer prices after prices picked up sharply because of harsh climate conditions, Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) said yesterday.
The ministry will halve tariffs on wheat, wheat flour and corn starch by 50 percent for six months to help absorb imported inflationary pressure, Lee told a media briefing.
The ministry will also reduce tariffs on milk powders and skim milk powers by 25 percent for the six months, Lee said, adding the cuts will take effect once the Cabinet gives approval.
The central government also plans to allow the local government to levy a tax on idle land from next week to stop land hoarding, Lee added.
King’s Town buys Kaohsiung land
King’s Town Construction Co (京城建設) bought 1,501.8 ping of land (1 ping=3.3m2) for NT$1.59 billion in Kaohsiung, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
On Monday, the company said that its board had agreed to pay up to NT$1.65 billion for the land.
Taipower seeks coal
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said it was seeking coal -cargoes in the spot market after floods in Queensland, Australia, disrupted contracted supplies.
Taipower expects its supplies from Queensland, which account for a total of 15 percent of its total coal needs, to return to normal in March, Taipower chief engineer Tu Yueh-yuan (杜悅元) said in an interview in Taipei yesterday.
Taipower expects to buy 27 million tonnes of the fuel this year, she said.
Hotai plans Chinese firm
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), a Taiwan-based distributor for Japanese car maker Toyota, said yesterday that one of its units would start a car accessory business in China to tap the huge auto market there.
Hotai said its car accessory vendor unit, Carmax Co (車美仕), has set up a company in China, with two branches scheduled to begin operations in March in Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Hotai said car accessories provided by Carmax, such as auto navigation systems, global positioning systems and radar systems, are certified by Toyota.
Carmax, set up in July 2001, has ranked as the largest car accessory vendor in Taiwan for five years, Hotai said.
Last year, Carmax posted more than NT$2.5 billion in sales, up 30 percent from 2009, when the company’s sales also rose about 30 percent from 2008, according to Hotai.
NT dollar rises
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US dollar yesterday, gaining NT$0.03 to close at NT$29.290 after intervention by the central bank to prevent a rapid rise of the currency.
Turnover totaled US$696 million during the trading session.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to