TAIEX closes up
Shares closed 0.43 percent higher yesterday as hopes for a recovery in tech stocks outweighed concerns over Wall Street's retreat overnight, dealers said.
They said there were hopes that key IT stocks would do better after Texas Instruments reported overnight that an inventory overhang that had been depressing sales had shown signs of easing.
The TAIEX rose 34.55 points to 8,045.01, on turnover of NT$98.56 billion (US$2.99 billion).
CPC raises gas prices
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) announced yesterday it would raise wholesale gasoline prices by NT$0.5 per liter and diesel prices by NT$0.6 per liter to reflect the rising cost of crude oil.
The new rates went into effective at midnight.
Adjusted retail prices per liter for 98-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$29.5; NT$28 per liter for 95-octane unleaded gasoline; NT$27.3 per liter for 92-octane unleaded gasoline; and NT$24.6 per liter for top-grade diesel oil, the company said in a statement.
Smaller rival Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) later said it would raise its prices to match CPC's, effective 2am today.
Bad loan ratio drops
The average non-performing loan (NPL) ratio of 41 local lenders dropped to 2.32 percent last month, down by 0.06 percentage points from February, the latest statistics from the Financial Supervisory Commission showed yesterday.
Coverage ratio, an indicator used to gauge the sufficiency of reserves to cover potential bad loans, edged up to 53.91 percent from 53.3 percent over the same time, the data showed.
Local banks incurred a combined pre-tax deficit of NT$4.54 billion for the first three months of this year, mainly because of a loss of NT$31.66 billion from The Chinese Bank (中華銀行), which was taken over by the government in January.
Meanwhile, the NPL ratio for credit cards rose for the second month by 0.14 percentage points to 2.5 percent last month, while the number of cards in circulation and evolving credit balance continued to shrink to 3.74 million and NT$323.5 billion, respectively.
Cash card's bad debt ratio continued to slide by 0.17 percentage points to 7.57 percent.
Central bank allows insurance
The nation's central bank has enacted rules that let insurers sell foreign currency-denominated life insurance and investment-type annuity products.
The change is meant to accommodate Taiwan's increasing internationalization and insurers' needs, the central bank said in a statement issued late on Monday.
The move is expected to give investors new choices, help insurers hedge overseas investment risks and help eliminate illegal foreign currency-denominated insurance products.
Gravel exports to be halted
The Ministry of Economic Affairs will soon announce a decision to suspend exports of gravel and sand in order to stabilize domestic supplies and protect natural resources, Minister Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) said yesterday.
Chen said the policy to suspend exports was crafted under the frame work of the Trade Act (貿易法) and would be implemented two months after the date of its announcement to preempt efforts by other countries to import Taiwanese gravel after China and Indonesia made the resource scarcer by suspending their gravel exports.
NT dollar loses ground
The New Taiwan dollar lost ground against its US counterpart, declining NT$0.017 to close at NT$33.183 on the Taipei Forex Inc.
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