China’s requirement for how much cash banks must hold as reserves is “very high” and should be reduced at an “appropriate time,” a senior banking regulator said, according to a media report.
Other financing tools can be used to manage the money supply after easing the required reserve ratio, China Banking Regulatory Commission official Yu Xuejun (於學軍) said at an event in Beijing, Shanghai Securities News reported yesterday.
New monetary tools, such as the medium-term lending facility (MLF), are best used after a cut, not before, Yu was quoted as saying.
The People’s Bank of China has held the required reserve ratio at 17 percent since February after four cuts last year.
It will be reduced to 16.5 percent in the fourth quarter of next year, then 16 percent in the first quarter of 2018, according to a Dec. 9 to Dec. 15 Bloomberg survey of economists.
The central bank started to use medium-term lending facility in 2014 to channel low-cost funds into banks while avoiding conditions that would fuel asset bubbles.
It also introduced the pledged supplementary lending tool, which steers cheap credit to state-backed policy lenders, such as the China Development Bank, to support efforts such as shantytown renovation and water projects.
Lowering the ratio lets banks lend more, which boosts credit expansion.
Frequently reducing the ratio can reinforce expectations for monetary easing, which would add to downward pressure on the yuan, the central bank said in its second-quarter monetary policy execution report.
Yu leads a panel responsible for oversight of major state-owned financial institutions, according to the commission’s Web site.
“The central bank has been injecting liquidity through open market operations and MLF,” said Gao Yuwei (高玉偉), a researcher at the Bank of China Ltd’s (中國銀行) Institute of International Finance in Beijing. “We believe it will continue to use that combination to contain financial risks and cut leverage.”
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