The banking sector’s asset quality improved slightly last month, with the non-performing loan (NPL) ratio dropping 0.11 percentage points from May to 1.5 percent, Financial Supervisory Commission data showed yesterday.
Bad loans by the nation’s 37 banks totaled NT$271.3 billion (US$8.26 billion) at the end of last month — a decrease of NT$18.2 billion from May, the data showed.
Twenty-nine of the banks had an NPL ratio of less than 2.5 percent, while seven had NPL ratios of between 2.5 percent and 5 percent.
Chinfon Commercial Bank (慶豐銀行) continued to top the list with an NPL ratio of 13.53 percent, but that was a big drop from its 30 percent level in May, although all of its bad loans under the government’s custody had been sold off to private asset management firms in March.
Amid the recent export slump, the demand for loans among local businesses picked up last month, reversing a previous decline that began last November.
Outstanding loans granted by the 37 banks increased by NT$48.6 billion to NT$18.54 trillion last month, the data showed. Of the total, 71.34 percent of the loans were covered by banks’ provisions, 2.69 percentage points up from May, the data showed.
Loans to private businesses and individuals increased by NT$111.7 billion last month, while lending to the government decreased by more than NT$50 billion, Banking Bureau Deputy Director Lin Tung-liang (林棟樑) told a media briefing yesterday.
Lin refused to say if the increased lending was a sign of “green shoots” in the economy.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the