Monetary supply measures expanded last month from a year earlier, but the pace of growth decelerated further from a month earlier because of slowing lending activity and a higher base of comparison in 2009, the central bank said yesterday.
M2, the broad monetary gauge tied to the economic showing as it includes time deposits, time savings deposits, foreign currency deposits, mutual funds and the narrower M1B of cash and cash equivalents, rose 5.14 percent last month from the level a year-earlier, compared with 5.2 percent in November, the bank said.
“Less aggressive lending and investments by major financial institutions in the private sector accounted for the smaller growth,” the bank said in a statement.
Total outstanding loans and investments of major lenders increased 6.19 percent year-on-year last month to NT$22.82 trillion (US$778.31 billion), easing from a revised 6.34 percent a month earlier, the report showed.
For last year, the M2 expansion rate averaged 4.59 percent, falling within the bank’s target growth zone of between 2.5 percent and 6.5 percent.
The narrower M1B reading, widely used to track fund movement in the local bourse, expanded 8.77 percent last month from December 2009, slowing for the 12th consecutive month from 9.18 percent last November, the report said.
The central bank dismissed the link between the M1B reading and the TAIEX, saying the stock market has more to do with individual company’s earnings ability and there remains ample liquidity.
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
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
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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