Despite an immediate positive impact on the retail and hotel sectors, the decision to allow the Chinese free independent travelers (FIT) to visit Taiwan will not fuel sales in the home property sector, Jones Lang LaSalle said yesterday.
“Contrary to the belief that Chinese will swamp Taiwan to buy apartments, we think it is quite the opposite,” Jones Lang LaSalle Taipei branch managing director Tony Chao (趙正義) said.
This is because most of them will travel to Taiwan for holiday or business purposes. Under previous restrictions, Chinese applications for a Taiwanese business visa normally took about three months and tourists had to travel here in tour groups, Chao told a press briefing.
Starting on Tuesday, residents of Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen were the first individual Chinese tourists allowed to visit Taiwan. Such travelers are capped at 500 per day and they have to fulfill certain criteria, including showing proof of financial stability.
Unlike Singapore or Hong Kong, Taiwan doesn’t have an investing migrants scheme, while current laws allow a Chinese citizen to stay here for a maximum of four months a year, Chao said.
In addition, their property transactions have to be approved by the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Investment Committee, as well as the Mainland Affairs Council, he said.
Therefore, the FIT program does not measure up to the perception that Chinese are “pouring in to buy property,” even though a handful of them may indeed purchase property for short-term stays instead of as an investment vessel, he said.
Those that would see immediate benefits from the scheme, however, are the retail and hotel sectors.
This is because some commercial buildings with poor rental rates are being renovated into business hotels to cash in on the influx of tourists and this is especially true in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) as well as the western part of the city, Jones Lang LaSalle said.
“Compared with buildings rented for office use that could be vacant for months, renting them to hotel operators will ensure a stable income for five to 10 years,” Jones Lang Lasalle investments and markets director Sherry Wu (吳瑤華) said.
Taipei’s retail shop lots, such as those located in Ximending (西門町) and along Zhongxiao E Road, are expected to see rental rates increase by 5 to 10 percent as they are popular tourist hangouts, it said.
Separately, Jones Lang Lasalle said transactions of the property market in Taiwan fell 36.2 percent from a year earlier to NT$19 billion (US$662 million) in the second quarter, mainly because of high vacancy rates of commercial buildings and the impact of the luxury tax.
Of that, transactions of commercial property took up NT$11.1 billion, or 58.4 percent of total transactions, it said.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure