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Lawmakers' failure to pass bank reform funds causes worry

Taxpayers may have to pick up a NT$1 billion tab for the legislature's likely failure to approve the expanded NT$680 billion Financial Restructuring Fund (金融重建基金) before the session ends on Friday, a high-ranking finance official said yesterday.

"The nation's two most debt-ridden banks awaiting a government bailout -- Chung Shing Commercial Bank (中興銀行) and Kaohsiung Business Bank (高雄企銀) -- are incurring combined losses of NT$260 million a month," said Gary Tseng (曾國烈), director-general of the Bureau of Monetary Affairs under the Ministry of Finance.

Each month, Chung Shing is losing NT$170 million and Kao-hsiung Business Bank is losing NT$90 million, Tseng said.

And even if the legislature makes passage of the funding bill its top priority in the next legislative session, which begins in September, government coffers and taxpayers will pick up the tab in the meantime, he said.

Tseng urged the legislature to accelerate the bill's passage, while blaming KMT and PFP lawmakers whose absence from scheduled inter-party negotiations yesterday killed the last chance to review the bill by Friday.

DPP Legislator Lin Chung-cheng (林忠正) yesterday also criticized his opposition colleagues for their political maneuverings to stall the bill's long-delayed passage, which he said had endangered the nation's economic development.

"The opposition parties are deliberately boycotting the bill to try to outshine the DPP administration's progress in financial reforms before the upcoming 2004 presidential elections," Lin said.

Lin said that the bill may not be passed even by October.

At a seminar yesterday, Hsu Chen-ming (許振明), an economic professor at National Taiwan University, expressed his hope that politics will not get in the way of financial reform.

He said that the legislature should pass the bill immediately since the ministry and opposition lawmakers have finally reached a consensus to cut the fund from the proposed NT$1.05 trillion to NT$680 billion.

Hsu said the fund was key not only to helping the troubled banking sector return to health but also to help finance SARS-affected businesses and revive the economy.

Wu Rong-i (吳榮義), president of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, said the government couldn't afford such losses during such financially troubled times.

Tseng said he was disappointed that the fund had been reduced to NT$680 billion and that the lack of money could make it difficult for the government to fulfill its 2:5:8 goal.

In August last year, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) vowed to reduce the nation's non-performing loan ratio to below 5 percent and raise the banking sector's capital adequacy ratio to above 8 percent within two years.

As of the end of March, the nation's non-performing loan ratio was 8.6 percent, or NT$1.2 trillion (US$35 billion), from 8.85 percent at the end of last year following aggressive write-offs of bad loans by domestic banks.
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