Expanding the National Stabilization Fund, which has NT$500 billion (US$16.2 billion) in capital, would be unnecessary, as the fund has in the past spent no more than NT$120 billion, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
The government has activated the fund six times, but has never spent more than its limit, with the highest spending totaling NT$120 billion, Minister of Finance Su Jain-rong (蘇建榮) told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
Hence, the ministry has no intention of expanding the fund, as proposed by lawmakers, but would not decrease it either, as global financial markets have become more volatile, Su said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋) agreed with Su, saying that investors would feel pessimistic about the local stock market if the government expanded the fund.
The fund’s NT$500 billion in capital is comprised of NT$200 billion in loans from the nation’s financial institutions, with shares of state-run banks used as collateral, and NT$300 billion in loans from four government-run funds: the Civil Servant Pension Fund, the Labor Pension Fund, the Labor Insurance Fund and the Postal Savings Fund, the ministry said.
Lawmakers have proposed increasing the loans from the four government-run funds, leaving loans from financial institutions unchanged, but they have disagreed about whether to increase or decrease the size.
A team led by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator William Tseng (曾銘宗) said given that the volatility of global financial markets is rising, it proposed to expand the size of loans from four funds to NT$800 billion, increasing the fund to NT$1 trillion.
However, other lawmakers, including a team led by KMT Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) and another led by KMT Legislator Lin Te-fu (林德福), called for a reduction of the fund, saying that the government should not borrow money from government-run funds just to stabilize the stock market.
If the government does not need so much capital, it should not take loans from the four state-run funds at all, as Taiwanese would not be pleased if their labor pensions are put into the stock market, Lin said.
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