TAIEX finishes higher
The TAIEX closed up 0.26 percent yesterday, with cement shares jumping on optimism about demand in China, analysts said.
The TAIEX closed 22.53 points higher, ending at 8,802.73, after moving between 8,772.30 and 8,835.39, on trading volume of NT$103.454 billion (US$3.57 billion).
A total of 2,484 stocks closed up, 1,582 finished down and 587 remained unchanged.
Compal mulls wage rise
Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s second-largest contract maker of notebook PCs, said yesterday it was mulling raising staff wages by at least 3 percent.
The company always reviews salaries in the third quarter and this time around it plans to give raises of at least 3 percent across the board, as a response to the government’s call to hike wages amid economic recovery, Compal president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰) said.
Administration nets overdue tax
The Taipei National Tax Administration said yesterday it has uncovered more than 40 tax evasion cases of pre-sale house transactions since November, netting more than NT$230 million in overdue tax.
The administration also received NT$110 million of penalties from these cases, a tax administration official told a media briefing.
The administration last year asked 28 Taipei-based land developers to submit information on pre-sale house transactions between 2006 and last year, receiving more than 1000 cases, the official said.
The administration will finish checking all these cases by the end of this year, the official said.
NCKU announces PET plan
National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) yesterday announced a cooperation plan with a US laboratory and manufacturer to jointly develop next-generation positron emission tomography (PET) technology that will significantly advance the diagnosis of breast cancer.
Under the terms of the project with the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Aurora Imaging Technology Inc, the new PET technology will be used in combination with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to create the world’s most progressive breast cancer diagnosis system, NCKU officials said.
According to BNL’s Medical Department, the new PET/MRI system will be able to accurately identify breast cancer tumors when they are only 0.2cm in size. Existing technology is unable to identify such tumors until they reach 4cm.
The time required for an accurate diagnosis will also be shortened from 30 minutes to within 5 minutes, NCKU said.
Chinese foreign reserves surge
China’s foreign reserves have surged past US$3 trillion, driven by currency controls that Washington and other governments complain are distorting trade and hampering a global recovery.
Chinese reserves, by far the world’s biggest, soared 24.4 percent from a year earlier to US$3.04 trillion at the end of last month, the central bank reported yesterday.
The reserves are the result of Beijing’s massive purchases of US dollars and other foreign currencies to restrain the rise of the yuan as export revenues and investment pour into its economy.
China’s reserves are nearly triple those of second-place Japan, which reported US$1.1 trillion as of March 31.
The makeup of China’s reserves is secret but Beijing is believed to keep more than half in US Treasury securities and other US government debt.
NT dollar gains on greenback
The New Taiwan dollar maintained its strength against the US dollar yesterday, rising NT$0.048 to close at NT$29.041. Turnover totaled US$714 million during the trading session.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last