The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday said that it would lift limits that have prevented commercial banks from taking part in urban renewal projects.
The government grants “bulk rewards” for urban renewal projects, which allows developers to construct larger properties on plots of land of the same size.
However, banks have been reluctant to convert their underutilized real-estate assets into urban renewal projects, because of current guidelines requiring commercial banks to occupy and use at least 50 percent of the additional space gained after the project’s completion.
A proposed amendment would lower mandatory occupancy to 20 percent in a bid to increase urban renewal participation among commercial banks and their willingness to work with real-estate developers, the commission said.
In addition, the commission would add exclusions to current rules stipulating that loans extended for residential construction and construction by commercial banks must not exceed 30 percent of their aggregate deposits and bank debentures.
A restriction barring banks from extending mortgage loans with terms exceeding 30 years would also be lifted, the commission said.
The changes would allow banks to play a larger role in the government’s efforts to accelerate urban renewal projects across the nation through the removal of bottlenecks in lending, the commission added.
The amendments are expected to be ratified by the legislature in the first half of next year.
Separately, the commission reported that at the end of last month, loans extended to the nation’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) rose NT$25.3 billion (US$783 million) from the previous month, with the amount in the first 11 months reaching NT$5.59 trillion.
At the end of last month SMEs represented 58.19 percent of private corporate lending, with a non-performing loan ratio of 0.48 percent, marking a 0.02 percentage point improvement.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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