The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) will soon establish criteria to assess applications by Chinese banks planning to open branches in Taiwan after a financial accord with China comes into effect in the middle of next month, commission Vice Chairwoman Lee Jih-chu (李紀珠) said yesterday.
Lee made the comment at a seminar in Taipei, where the Beijing-based Agricultural Bank of China (中國農民銀行) expressed an interest in opening branches in Taipei.
Chinese banks wishing to open branches in Taiwan will have to be examined, she said, adding that the recent global financial crisis had exposed many defects in the cross-strait financial supervisory systems.
Lee said the commission was in the process of revising those regulations.
Agricultural Bank of China vice president Yang Kun (楊琨) told reporters yesterday that while the bank intends to open a branch in Taiwan, it has yet to consider acquiring shares in Taiwanese banks because he was not familiar with Taiwan’s regulations.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) last week told media that for the moment, Taiwanese financial institutions would not be opened to Chinese investment.
The Agricultural Bank yesterday launched a new debit card tailor-made for customers shopping on credit in Taiwan, which could serve as a stepping stone for deeper financial cooperation with local banks.
The bank is working together with China UnionPay (中國銀聯) in issuing the debit cards to meet demand by a growing number of Chinese tourists. Chinese people are only allowed to take 20,000 yuan (US$2,930) on their visits to Taiwan.
The launch of the debit card represents “the beginning of cross-strait cooperation and will facilitate increased collaboration,” Yang told another press briefing, without elaborating.
The bank’s clients began using the debit cards in August and have spent more than 300 million yuan in Taiwan, China UnionPay said.
The number of Chinese tourists nearly tripled to 766,026 in the first 10 months of this year, compared with last year’s 258,852, making up more than 21 percent of the total of 3.53 million tourists to Taiwan, the latest statistics by the Tourism Bureau showed.
The bank’s debit card holders can shop at more than 6,000 stores across Taiwan.
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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