The fate of an amendment to a bill to fund a clean-up of the financial sector is still up in the air after the caretaker Cabinet and the legislature failed to reach an agreement late Monday.
"We are pretty pessimistic that the Financial Restructuring Fund (
According to Chen, Premier Yu Shyi-kun met with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) Monday afternoon in an attempt to solicit his support to accelerate the passage of 33 bills, including the one related to the fund, which are on the Cabinet's priority list for passage before a reshuffle in February.
But Wang only promised to push forward passage of bills that are urgent -- such as the central government's budget -- by the year's end.
The Financial Restructuring Fund is modelled after the US Resolution Trust Corp of the 1980s and was set up in 2001. The fund has dwindled to around NT$40 billion (US$1.23 billion) from an initial NT$140 billion. The amendment lawmakers are considering would expand the size of the depleted fund.
The legislature is reviewing the supplemental funding this week, but people close to the inter-party negotiations see slim chances of it being passed during the lame-duck legislative session that ends on Dec. 31.
DPP Legislator-at-large Lin Chung-cheng (林忠正) yesterday reiterated that there's little chance of the bill being added to the legislative agenda in the next two weeks, making the odds of it being passed in an extraordinary session early next year even slimmer.
Lin had previously predicted that the bill, which has been frozen in the legislature for over a year, might re-emerge after the newly elected legislature convenes in two months.
Still, People First Party legislator Norman Yin (
"It all depends on the legislature's pace, since most disagreements have been ironed out," Yin said. He denied media reports that the party wants to cut the government's proposed funding to NT$240 billion.
Even so, the government's failure to quickly re-open a legislative discussion on the fund's size has impacted financial shares.
On Monday, the market fell slightly following the DPP's electoral defeat, further pushing the stock market's financial index down by 19.2 points from Friday's 1020.69 points, to close at 1001.45 points.
The financial index edged up to 1004.13 points yesterday after a local media report said the legislature had agreed to pass the fund's bill by the year's end, pending a finalization of the fund's size.
The report, however, turned out to be inaccurate, according to the Cabinet's spokesman.
Alex Huang (
"Financial shares may go through up-and-downs along with the bill's progress, but in the long term, upside is foreseeable, which is irrelevant to the bill's passage," Huang said.
Huang said the government is unlikely to backtrack on financial reform and the banking sector is recovering as a result of rising interest-rate spreads, triggered by an interest-rate increase.
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day