The average interest rate on home loans from the nation’s five major lenders dropped last month to its lowest level this year, dragged down by an increase in preferential mortgages for first-time home buyers and the US delaying its quantitative easing (QE) exit window, the central bank said yesterday.
The Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行), Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行), Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南商業銀行) and First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) made NT$44.34 billion (US$1.51 billion) in new housing loans last month at an average interest rate of 1.942 percent, down from the 1.947 percent recorded in August, the bank said in a report.
“The US Federal Reserve’s decision to continue QE has caused interest rates to maintain a relative loss, but the pace of the decline is limited,” Chen E-dawn (陳一端), the bank’s Economic Research Department deputy head, told a press conference.
Meanwhile, first-time home buyers applied for a total of NT$9.5 billion in loans for the preferential mortgage program, up from the NT$8.8 billion recorded in August, which may also drag down the average interest rate on home loans, Chen added.
New housing loans by the five banks totaled NT$44.34 billion last month, an increase of NT$1.31 billion from August, the report said.
Chen said Ghost Month — observed during the seventh month of the lunar calendar — also had an impact on the rise in total housing loans, as it is traditionally a period during which people avoid making big transactions. Ghost Month was from Aug. 7 to Sept. 4 this year.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained