President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) pledged yesterday that his administration would seek to simplify visa application procedures for Chinese citizens to encourage more arrivals from China.
Ma said that the government had already eased restrictions on visits by Chinese tourists, lowering the requirement for the minimum number of people in a single tour group from 10 to five.
The president made the remarks during an investor forum, held jointly by the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the brokerage house Merrill Lynch, at which two Chinese investors complained about the lengthy procedures involved for Chinese to visit Taiwan.
Regarding the government’s efforts to improve Taiwan’s business environment, Ma said his administration would work to diversify the industrial sector, upgrade the country’s infrastructure and promote the signing of an economic cooperation framework agreement with China to make Taiwan more internationalized and show the world that “Taiwan is still very important.”
He said Taiwan plans to pursue an economic agreement with China and seek free-trade agreements with other countries.
The government will also seek to boost exports, stimulate domestic demand and speed up deregulation, he said.
Ma also said the government doesn’t plan to inject funds to bail out ailing companies even as the nation’s US$23.6 billion memory-chip industry faces record losses.
The government “won’t rescue individual companies and instead hopes to boost the industry’s competitiveness through integration and help the industry develop its own intellectual property rights,” Ma said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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