NT dollar barely budges
The New Taiwan dollar was little changed yesterday and the country’s stock and bond markets were closed ahead of Lunar New Year holiday.
The NT dollar fell NT$0.008 to close at NT$29.630 against its US counterpart as the central bank’s intervention efforts pushed up the greenback for the third consecutive day, dealers said.
Before the bank’s intervention, the NT dollar was rising, but a falling Chinese yuan let some air out of the local currency, they said.
Turnover totaled US$603 million during the trading session.
“It’s the long holiday coming, volume has dropped dramatically,” said Tarsicio Tong (湯健揚), a Taipei-based currency trader at Union Bank of Taiwan (聯邦銀行). “The Taiwan dollar could extend its fall after the holiday as we’re seeing declines in the other major Asian currencies.”
Taiwan Cement warns over unit
Taiwan Cement Corp (台灣水泥) yesterday said its Hong Kong-listed subsidiary, TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團), could witness a profit fall of about 60 percent in the wake of a supply glut and declining product prices in China.
In the six months to June last year, TCC posted HK$262.85 million (US$33.92 million) in net profit, compared with HK$931.96 million in net profit recorded in the same period of 2011. TCC’s earnings per share in the first half of last year fell to HK$0.061 from about HK$0.28.
For all of last year, the company’s bottom line is expected to be “adversely affected” and it is possible that a year-on-year decline of about 60 percent in net profit will be reported, TCC said in a profit warning to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
OBUs post record savings
Taiwan’s offshore banking units (OBUs) recorded 24.04 billion yuan (US$3.85 billion) in savings in December last year, a record high since the Financial Supervisory Commission opened up yuan operations for OBUs in July 2011.
Taiwan’s OBUs recorded savings of 19.31 billion yuan in October last year, 21.49 billion yuan in November and 24.04 billion yuan in December, a monthly increase of 11.9 percent, according to statistics published by the central bank on Wednesday.
Among the 62 OBUs, total assets of US$170.91 billion were recorded in December, also hitting a record high, the data showed.
NDF invests in Drug R&D Fund
The National Development Fund’s (NDF) steering committee on Wednesday agreed to inject US$30 million into Drug R&D Fund LP, an venture capital instrument initiated by Japan’s Daiwa Corporate Investment Co Ltd.
The Drug R&D Fund is expected to raise up to US$100 million from Japanese pharmaceutical companies and will use the money to invest in biochemical firms in Taiwan and Japan, the committee said in a statement.
The committee said it hoped the partnership with Drug R&D Fund will help introduce technological know-how from Japan, while gaining steady income from investing in Japanese pharmaceutical firms.
A committee official said the Drug R&D Fund needed to raise at least US$75 million by February next year, or the investment project would be cancelled. The total capital of the fund is set to be no more than US$150 billion.
National debt increases
National debt was NT$231,000 (US$7,800) per person as of the end of last month, up NT$7,000 from the end of last year, due to routine spending before the Lunar New Year holiday, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
National debt, including long-term and short-term debt, amounted to NT$6.23 trillion as of the end of last month, up NT$99.55 billion from a month earlier, the ministry’s data showed.
Government bonds — the central government’s outstanding debt with a maturity of more than a year — totaled NT$5.945 trillion, while Treasury bills — outstanding debt with a maturity of less than a year — stood at NT$285 billion, the data showed.
China’s SUV sales surge
China’s passenger-vehicle sales surged 49 percent to a monthly record, beating analysts’ estimates, as demand for SUVs almost doubled and Ford Motor Co extended gains in market share.
Wholesale deliveries climbed to 1.73 million units last month, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in an e-mail yesterday. That compares with the 1.5 million unit average of six analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
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
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
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
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