The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday that local financial firms — including banks and credit cooperatives — passed the commission’s stress test on liquidity risks, because lenders have strengthened their financial structure since the onset of the global financial crisis.
The commission said in a statement yesterday that domestic lenders showed an even stronger capability to withstand a more serious crisis than the global financial tsunami in 2008, citing various financial data.
Banks’ average non-performing loan ratio dropped to 0.91 percent at the end of June from 1.55 percent in June 2008, while their average capital adequacy ratio rose to 11.61 percent from 10.89 percent and their coverage ratio — loans covered by banks’ provisions and a gauge indicating sufficiency of bad loan reserves — climbed to 113.38 percent from 67.35 percent over the two-year period, it said.
The commission said it conducted the stress test on lenders’ liquidity risks recently to assess their ability to sustain a potential loss of funds ahead of the Dec. 31 expiration date of a blanket guarantee on all depositors’ savings introduced by the government in September 2008.
Beginning next year, the government should revert to guaranteeing deposits of up to NT$1.5 million (US$47,200), but the commission said yesterday it would raise the ceiling on deposit insurance to NT$3 million from Jan. 1 and extend the coverage to 98.6 percent for all depositors.
The commission added that a proposal to expand deposit insurance to cover foreign-currency accounts and interest on deposits is awaiting legislative review.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
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