The legislature’s Internal Administration Committee yesterday passed a resolution asking the government to ban senior Chinese government officials from buying property in Taiwan.
To prevent top Chinese officials from investing in the real estate market, the committee wants a clause added to the regulations on real estate investment by Chinese nationals to exclude communist party officials, government officials, military leaders and intelligence officers from owning property rights.
At the committee meeting, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yeh Yi-ching (葉宜津) asked Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) whether the government would allow Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), chairman of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), to invest in the local property market.
Jiang said if Chen filed an application, the local county or city government would review it and submit it for the central government’s approval.
“Not all applications will be approved,” Jiang said.
Since Taiwan began to open its real estate market to Chinese investment in 2002, there have been 35 applications for investment, with 10 of these — all for residential properties — approved, Chiang said.
Chiang said that of the 18 applications that were rejected, one was rejected for security reasons as it concerned property in the Boai “special district” near the Presidential Building and presidential residence.
Jiang said the government would continue to review Chinese applications carefully to prevent any security or speculation concerns.
Seven applications from China are currently under review, Jiang said.
Although Taiwan allows Chinese to invest in real estate, Beijing restricts the amount of Chinese funds flowing into Taiwan, so the number of applications have not been as high as expected, Jiang told legislators.
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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