The banking sector’s asset quality deteriorated slightly in February, with the non-performing loan (NPL) ratio edging up 0.04 percentage points month-on-month to 1.61 percent, Financial Supervisory Commission data showed yesterday.
Bad loans by the nation’s 37 banks totaled NT$293.5 billion (US$8.65 billion) at the end of February — an increase of NT$3.9 billion from January, the commission’s data showed.
Twenty-seven of the 37 banks had an NPL ratio of less than 2.5 percent, while nine had NPL ratios of between 2.5 percent and 5 percent. Chinfon Commercial Bank (慶豐銀行) topped the list again with an NPL ratio of 35.83 percent at the end of February although all of its bad loans under the government’s custody had been sold off to private asset management firms last week.
“The banking sector’s asset quality was relatively stable last month,” Lin Tung-liang (林棟樑), deputy director of the banking bureau, told a media briefing yesterday.
However, the recent export slump has dragged down the demand for loans among local businesses, he said.
Outstanding loans granted by the 37 banks dropped by NT$170 billion month-on-month to NT$18.24 trillion in February, the commission’s data showed. Of the total, 68.97 percent of the loans were covered by banks’ provisions as of the end of February, down from 69.96 percent as of the end of January, the data showed.
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