The postal savings fund will not be used to invest in Chinese markets, Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) said yesterday.
“We have stopped considering this option. It will not happen during my term [as minister],” he said at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which was scheduled to review Chunghwa Post Co’s budget for next fiscal year.
Last month, the state-run postal company announced plans to amend the Management Measures for Investing Postal Savings in Bonds and Bills (郵政儲金投資債券票券管理辦法) as well as the Management Measures for Investing in Beneficiary Certificates and Public Offering Stocks (郵政儲金投資受益憑證及上市(櫃)股票管理辦法) to allow it to invest in Chinese stocks, bonds and other financial products.
With the postal savings fund topping NT$5 trillion (US$158.3 billion), Chunghwa Post has proposed that it be permitted to invest up to three-fifths of its net asset value.
However, the proposal has drawn public criticism, with some netizens threatening to withdraw all their postal savings.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lee Kun-tse (李昆澤) said that the Financial Supervisory Commission and international credit institutions have warned about the high risks of investing in China.
Noting that some state-owned Chinese banks are floundering because of their large credit exposure, Lee asked if the postal firm wanted to risk losing the funds of 20 million postal savings account holders.
In response, Chunghwa Post chairman Philip Weng (翁文祺) said the company has stopped pushing the proposed amendments after taking the risks and the opinions of experts into consideration.
In related news, about 4,000 entry-level postal service workers can soon expect a pay raise of about 7 percent following negotiations with the postal workers’ union, Weng said.
Entry-level workers at the Taiwan Railways Administration will also enjoy a salary increase of 3 to 6 percent, the railway operator said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching