Shares plunge 3.5 percent
A day after soaring, the TAIEX plunged 3.5 percent yesterday as the government wavered on whether to cut a securities trading tax. The TAIEX lost 233.92 points to close at 6,424.77 points.
On Monday, the index jumped 5.6 percent on optimism about a planned government stimulus package and news of the US bailout of US mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. But yesterday, the construction sector led the decline, losing 4.8 percent.
The TAIEX has dropped 26 percent this year, largely because the downturn in the global economy has cut demand for high-tech exports. Last week alone, it plunged 10 percent.
To boost the market, the government announced early on Monday that it would cut the securities transaction tax, but it later retracted the statement.
Tax revenues decrease
The treasury collected NT$80.6 billion (US$2.52 billion) in tax revenues last month, down 17.8 percent compared with the same period last year, the Ministry of Finance said in a report yesterday.
The biggest drop was recorded in securities transaction tax revenues, which decreased 55 percent, or NT$8.2 billion, to NT$6.7 billion, the lowest since November 2006, Statistics Director Lin Lee-jen (林麗貞) told a press briefing.
Incomes for commodity and land added-value taxes stood at NT$9.8 billion and NT$4.3 billion respectively, Lin said, which translated into a drop of 38.9 percent and 29.8 percent respectively.
However, personal income tax posted an increase of 8.1 percent to NT$38.6 billion, the report said. For the first eight months of the year, tax revenues reached NT$1.21 trillion, up NT$NT$42.6 billion, or 3.6 percent, from a year ago, the ministry report said.
Job market looking up
The outlook for the labor market was expected to show stable improvement in the third quarter, the latest Manpower employment survey showed yesterday.
The survey found that 31 percent of employers expected to increase their hiring in the third quarter, while 58 percent did not expect a change. Only 6 percent of employers expected to cut back on hiring new employees.
The outlook for the net employment diffusion index increased to 24 percent in third quarter from 19 percent in the previous quarter and 14 percent a year earlier, the survey showed.
Manpower said hiring would increase in the third quarter in the finance, insurance, real estate, manufacturing and wholesale and retail sectors. The transportation and utilities sectors were expected to cut back on new hiring in the third quarter.
CPC restarts burned unit
CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) restarted a unit at its Kaohsiung refinery and may resume production at another unit after closing them because of a fire in January.
The damaged vacuum gasoil unit was restarted on Thursday and the fluid catalytic cracker “is ready” to resume output, Jessica Tang (唐苑莉), a CPC spokeswoman, said yesterday.
The units can each process 25,000 barrels of fuel a day.
Restarting the units will increase output of gasoline and diesel, CPC spokesman Chu Shao-hua (朱少華) said on Friday.
A gas leak triggered an explosion at the gasoil unit on Jan. 5.
NT dollar loses ground
The NT dollar lost ground against the US dollar on the Taipei Foreign Exchange yesterday, declining NT$0.073 to close at NT$31.872.
A total of US$1.122 billion changed hands during the day’s trading.
The US currency opened at the day’s low of NT$31.799 and closed at the day’s high of NT$31.931.
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