Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (
"The government is unlikely to raise any taxes before the year's end," Lin told the legislature yesterday morning.
Lin, however, added that tax- reform efforts "need to be accelerated," including the implementation of a proposal to raise the value-added tax (VAT) by one to two percentage points from cur-rent 5 percent.
"A consensus needs to be immediately forged [on reforms]while legislative approval is necessary to push forward the tax-hike proposal," Lin added.
Lin said that the ministry's finance committee has set a goal of reforming the tax structure within the next five years. To avoid a backlash, Lin vowed to solicit support from the legislature before pushing forward controversial tax hike proposals in the near future.
Many in the business community are worried that President Chen Shui-bian's (
Meanwhile, Lin remained tight-lipped yesterday about the government's stance on competing against KGI Securities Co's (中信證券) Angelo Koo for the chairmanship of China Development Financial Holding Corp (開發金控).
Lin has said that if the government wins a majority of seats on the lender's 21-member board of directors after Monday's board elections, it is likely to designate its own candidate for the top job.
The government and KGI have together secured over 60 percent of the proxy votes for the board election, which would give them enough votes to oust China Development chairwoman Diana Chen (陳敏薰).
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
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