Applications by domestic financial institutions to gain greater access to the Chinese market will not be accepted for at least two or three weeks, the legislature’s Finance Committee said yesterday.
Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才), convener of the committee, said the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) needed to submit a proposal for review by the legislature before local financial institutions could submit their applications to the commission.
Lo said the proposal had to be passed by the Procedure Committee first and then sent to the Finance Committee for review.
“It will be another two to three weeks at the earliest,” he said.
It was previously expected that the FSC would accept applications by domestic financial institutions starting yesterday at the earliest, after the FSC attended the Finance Committee’s meeting the same day.
Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) chairwoman Susan Chang (張秀蓮) said the process would be less controversial if all lawmaking procedures were done according to the rules.
“We have been waiting for seven to eight years, so it will not make much difference if we need to wait for another couple of weeks or a month,” Chang said.
Meanwhile, FSC Chairman Sean Chen (陳冲) said the “early harvest” program for the financial industry under the proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China would be announced at the end of next month.
Chen said the FSC would seek the best deal under the trade pact, such as allowing local banks to operate Chinese yuan-related businesses.
According to regulations promulgated by the FSC last Tuesday with immediate effect, Taiwanese banks, insurance companies and securities firms will be able to branch into China via two of the three approaches: setting up representative offices, opening branches or subsidiaries or taking up a stake in a Chinese bank or firm.
If their applications to set up operations are approved by the FSC, domestic banks and financial holding companies will also be required to file applications to Chinese authorities for regulatory approval, which will notify the FSC if the applications are approved, FSC officials said.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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