TOURISM
New Zealand to levy tax
New Zealand’s Labour-led government said on Friday it plans to impose a tax on most international visitors to fund infrastructure and ease strains on the South Pacific nation’s booming tourist sector. The new tax of up to NZ$35 (US$24.29) per person is to start halfway next year — in the middle of the official “China New Zealand Year of Tourism” — and is expected to provide an extra NZ$57 million to NZ$80 million each year to fund conservation and infrastructure.
GERMANY
Growth forecast tempered
The central bank yesterday said that it had sharply downgraded its economic growth forecast for this year, but grew more optimistic for next year, saying that the present boom should continue although the danger of a trade war is rising. For next year, the Bundesbank upgraded its growth outlook by 0.2 percentage points, to 1.9 percent, while it slightly raised its 2020 forecast to 1.6 percent.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
Softbank to fund Indian solar
Japan’s Softbank Group Corp is planning to invest between US$60 billion and US$100 billion in a solar power project in India as the firm looks to expand its interests into various sectors, an NHK report said yesterday. The public broadcaster said that the massive investment in India would be funded jointly by Softbank and Saudi Arabia, which have already partnered to create the Vision Fund investment vehicle. NHK said the deal would likely be announced by Softbank and the Indian government after details are finalized, without giving a timeline.
TECHNOLOGY
Google buys Dutch land
Alphabet Inc’s Google bought 70 hectares of land in the Netherlands as it explores options for constructing more data centers across Europe. The company on Thursday said it is still considering whether to build on the site in the province of North Holland, but that a decision will be made soon. Google already owns a datacenter in the Eemshaven port in the province of Groningen and earlier this year announced that it would invest 500 million euros (US$577.8 million) to expand it, after initially spending 600 million euros.
SEMICONDUCTORS
China approves NXP merger
Qualcomm Inc’s US$43 billion acquisition of NXP Semiconductors NV has been approved by Chinese regulators, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. The stocks rallied in extended trading. Clearance from China would remove the final regulatory hurdle for the purchase, which has been pending for more than 18 months. The decision by Chinese regulators will allow the transaction to be completed ahead of a July deadline set by NXP, which has said it would abandon the deal if it was not approved by then.
TRANSPORTAION
Musk wins Chicago project
The Boring Co, founded by Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk, has been selected to build a high-speed underground transportation system that it said would whisk passengers from downtown Chicago to O’Hare International Airport in mere minutes. Each electric vehicle in the proposed tunnel system is to carry eight to 16 people and travel at speeds of 200 to 240kph, the company said on Thursday. Boring said that it would fund the project in its entirety, and plans to collect ticket and advertising revenue.
Gudeng Precision Industrial Co (家登精密), the sole extreme ultraviolet pod supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), yesterday said it has trimmed its revenue growth target for this year as US tariffs are likely to depress customer demand and weigh on the whole supply chain. Gudeng’s remarks came after the US on Monday notified 14 countries, including Japan and South Korea, of new tariff rates that are set to take effect on Aug. 1. Taiwan is still negotiating for a rate lower than the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariffs announced by the US in April, which it later postponed to today. The
ELECTRONICS: Strong growth in cloud services and smart consumer electronics offset computing declines, helping the company to maintain sales momentum, Hon Hai said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday announced that its sales for last month rose 10 percent year-on-year, driven by strong growth in cloud and networking products amid the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company, also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), reported consolidated sales of NT$540.24 billion (US$18.67 billion) for the month, the highest ever for the period, and a 10.09 percent increase from a year earlier, although it was down 12.26 percent from the previous month. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said its cloud
Video streaming giant Netflix is launching a talent cultivation program in Taiwan aimed at producing high-quality Mandarin content, the company announced in a press release on Thursday. Netflix Chinese language content head Maya Huang (黃怡玫) said that Netflix has long invested in the Taiwanese market, citing the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity launched last year as an example. The fund would continue to dedicate resources to discovering content with the potential to be developed into Chinese-language projects, she added. The financing for the new talent projects seeks to create an ecosystem for content creators and professional development programs, she said. The talent projects
APPRECIATION: The central bank stepped in to stabilize the NT dollar after a surge in foreign institutional investment, triggered by optimism about tariffs and US Fed policy Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, as the central bank intervened in the currency market to curb the New Taiwan dollar’s appreciation against the US dollar. Foreign exchange reserves increased by US$5.48 billion from May, reaching an all-time high of US$598.43 billion, the central bank said on Friday. While the central bank did not disclose the scale of its intervention, Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民) said that the currency market remained relatively stable until the middle of last month. However, a shift occurred following the US Federal Reserve’s signal of a
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