BANKING
Housing loans hit record
Local banks’ outstanding housing loans last month grew to a record-high NT$6.718 trillion (US$224.34 billion), with annual growth of 4.63 percent and a monthly increase of 2.79 percent, central bank statistics released on Friday last week showed. Housing loans have risen annually by between 4 and 5 percent every month since the beginning of last year, indicating a steady recovery, the bank said. Meanwhile, construction loans grew 5.37 percent from a year earlier and 9.35 percent from the previous month to NT$1.749 trillion, it said.
ECONOMY
Circulated money rises 5.6%
Last month’s M1B — a measure of the money in circulation in the nation — grew 5.6 percent year-on-year, the central bank reported on Thursday last week. The increase was the largest in 15 months, which the central bank attributed to growth in demand deposits. The M2 — which includes the M1B, time deposits, foreign-currency deposits and mutual funds — saw annual growth decrease to 3.59 percent amid the mixed effects of net foreign capital outflows and growth in loans and investments, the bank said.
MANUFACTURING
Fewer work days saps sector
The local manufacturing sector reported weak sentiment last month, with the composite index that gauges the climate of the sector dropping 1.7 points from a month earlier to 98.32, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) said on Friday. The fall reflected seasonal weakness and the effect of fewer work days in the month due to the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday. However, the composite index for the service sector moved higher by 0.45 points from a month earlier to 95, the institute said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by