President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is not pulling the strings of the central bank, which has always followed independent monetary and foreign exchange policies, the bank said yesterday.
The clarification came in response to an op-ed piece in the Chinese-language China Times, which asked the president to keep his “hands off the central bank.”
Citing Ma’s interview with Bloomberg published on Thursday, the article accused the president of undermining the independence of the central bank by overstepping his authority and saying that Taiwan would not depreciate its currency to help boost exports.
However, the central bank said that when asked whether Taiwan would follow Japan’s move to depreciate its currency, Ma’s exact words in the interview were that “both the Executive Yuan and the central bank” believed the situations in Taiwan and Japan are different.
“If we depreciate the currency, the public will face inflation,” Ma had said, pointing out that Japan, unlike Taiwan, had been dealing with deflation.
“The fact is Taiwan’s currency has depreciated at a faster rate of late than it had over the past few years. Therefore, we think a stable monetary policy would influence our imports and exports in a more balanced way,” Ma said.
The bank said the president and the premier respected its monetary and foreign exchange policies and had never interfered in that regard.
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