Taiwan's central bank said more than 11 percent of bank lending was non-performing or in trouble as of September, as terrorist attacks, natural disasters and a slowing economy caused more businesses to default on debts.
The NT$1.66 trillion (US$48 billion) of sour loans included NT$1.12 trillion reported by domestic banks as non-performing, equivalent to 7.79 percent of outstanding credits, the bank said in a statement. About 3.74 percent, or NT$537 billion, of loans are "under surveillance" and may turn bad.
"A sluggish property market and a rising unemployment rate also hurt individuals' ability to repay their loans," the central bank said. Aside from that, two typhoons hit Taiwan in late September, killing at least 100 people.
Taiwan's property market has yet to pull out of a decade-long slump that began when the country's stock market crashed in the early 1990s. There are at least 1.2 million excess homes on the island, and a slowing economy is further weakening demand while forcing more people to sell.
Nine straight months of record unemployment and a shrinking economy are sapping consumer demand in Taiwan. Tame inflation has allowed the central bank to trim interest rates 10 times since December to a record low 2.5 percent, and the bank may trim rates further after an expected US rate cut tomorrow, analysts said.
The central bank is trying to spur investment and lending to counter a drop in exports that tipped Taiwan into recession earlier this year. The government expects the economy to shrink as much as 2 percent this year, as the Sept. 11 attacks on the US
curb demand in Taiwan's biggest export market.
A 14 percent drop in the key TAIEX Index this year is sapping consumer and business spending.
The government is encouraging the country's almost 50 banks, 39 financial cooperatives and 285 farm and fisheries credit unions to combine into fewer, stronger companies, to reduce the percentage of loans going bad ahead of Taiwan's entry into the WTO.
In June, Taiwan set up a NT$140 billion fund to help finance a clean-up of credit cooperatives and other small lenders.
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
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the