The volume of bad consumer loans has led to contraction in the nation's credit card market, with card numbers seeing negative growth for the first time in the last 15 years, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday.
As of last month, the number of credit cards in circulation shrank 0.33 percent from the previous month to 4.56 million cards. Meanwhile, revolving credit grew a marginal 0.67 percent month-on-month to NT$495.2 billion (US$14.95 billion), while the non-performing loan (NPL) ratio edged down 0.08 percentage points to 2.37 percent over the same time, according to statistics released by the FSC yesterday.
Credit card cancellations have outnumbered new cards issued for two months in succession by 687,415 to 604,570, according to the latest statistics.
The number of cash-advance cards in effect has decreased for five consecutive months and is now at 3.59 million cards, down 2.18 percent from October. The bad loan ratio, however, climbed by 0.45 percentage points to 2.28 percent, the statistics showed.
The NPL ratio of all 46 local banks declined to 2.61 percent last month, down from 2.81 percent in October.
The coverage ratio dropped to 40.63 percent, down from 41.17 percent the
previous month. The coverage balance decreased by 7.63 percent
month-on-month to NT$173 billion, which was mainly due to Chang Hwa
Commercial Bank's (彰化銀行) NT$10.9 billion of coverage balance losses
after it wrote off NT$34.9 billion of defaulted loans last month.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained