President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) economic advisory panel is scheduled to present an economic proposal to the president today, suggesting the government transform the nation into a hub of asset management for the Asia-Pacific region.
Vincent Siew (
To achieve that goal, Siew said the panel will suggest the government authorize the Financial Restructuring Fund Committee to provide guarantees to all depositors and creditors of problematic banking institutions handled by the fund.
A bill revising of the financial restructuring fund, a mechanism set up in 2001 and modeled after the US Resolution Trust Corporation, still waits for legislative approval. The Legislative Yuan will begin a new session at the end of next week.
The government reiterated yesterday that it will seek to raise its financial restructuring fund to NT$680 billion -- well above the opposition parties' cap of NT$320 billion.
Officials said the government hopes to get legislative approval for the change by October.
"The Cabinet hopes the statute revision of the fund will win legislative approval soon, but there are some other bills that need to be addressed ... we expect the bill to be passed by October," an aide to Cabinet spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) quoted Lin as saying.
Vice Minister of Finance Yang Tze-kaing (
The fund was aimed to help bail out troubled financial institutions. The financial sector would suffer if there was no such mechanism, Yang said.
"The government needs tools and liquidity in order to proceed with the planned financial reforms," he said, adding that "the more money we have the stronger the effects."
Lawmakers agree the fund is of vital importance, but they have yet to reach consensus on its allowable size.
PFP Legislator Norman Yin (
"We want the bill to be approved, but we do not want the government to waste [money]," Yin said.
Yin said the PFP's stance is for the fund cap of NT$320 billion and the Cabinet can seek a special budget if it needs more.
It is still uncertain if the fund bill can be included in next month's agenda of the legislature, Yin said.
Taiwan's 52 banks wrote off a total of NT$410.8 billion in non-performing loans (NPL) last year, cutting the banking sector's average NPL ratio to 6.12 percent at the end of December from 7.12 percent at the end of September.
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