The Financial Supervisory Commission said yesterday there is still room for domestic banks to raise their provisions as they fail to meet capital adequacy requirements and overall real-estate loans remain high.
The commission made the comments after real-estate-linked lending amounted to NT$11.58 trillion (US$372.2 billion) at the end of May, accounting for 50.81 percent of overall outstanding loans.
While all 39 lenders had a bad loan ratio of less than 2 percent, their general provisions stood at 0.93 percent, lower than the 1 percent minimum, the commission said.
“The figures suggest room for improvement and the commission will tell below-par banks to strengthen their financial health and the quality of their assets,” the commission said.
As of May, the sector’s bad loan ratio stayed unchanged at 0.44 percent, with aggregate non-performing loans falling by NT$8 million to NT$99.2 billion, commission data showed.
Total outstanding loans stood at NT$22.79 trillion, down NT$24.1 billion from the end of April, the commission said.
Separately, the commission fined Global Life Insurance Co (國寶人壽) NT$48 million for failing to comply with investment restrictions.
The punishment came after the commission in May banned the insurer from investments in risky assets after Global Life cast a vote in the election of directors at Long Bon International Co (龍邦).
The commission had warned the insurer beforehand not to interfere in the board reshuffle.
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