Amid the cheering at midnight on December 31, spare a thought for the thousands of Taiwanese bank staff waiting quietly for a possible financial meltdown.
All of Taiwan's banks will be mounting a Y2K vigil, stopping all computer systems before the fateful zero hour and restarting them in the hope that months of planning and billions of dollars in spending have made them invulnerable to a feared dateline error.
Even before the fateful date, a fear of mass cash withdrawals on the eve of the New Year has led the Central Bank of China (
"If financial institutions have Y2K problems, they can apply for liquidity from us.... The central bank will also be providing sufficient liquidity through open market operations," the official added.
Financial institutions, which are heavily dependent on date-related electronic transactions, are recognized as being the most vulnerable to the Y2K bug, followed by the telecommunications, power and transport sectors.
All financial institutions, including securities houses and banks, have passed the Y2K readiness tests, the central bank official said.
"There is nothing for the public to fear," he said, adding: "We'll have a financial crisis if people lose confidence in financial institutions and withdraw deposits on a large scale."
But the waiting will not be over on Jan. 1, a financial analyst from a leading foreign investment bank said yesterday.
"The Y2K bug could happen any time next year, even if measures to combat Y2K are successful in the beginning, as timed deposits which mature sometime next year could still cause the same sort of computer malfunction," she said.
However, most financial analysts were buoyant regarding banks' Y2K preparedness.
China Securities system manager Irene Kuo (
"The banks have foreseen most cash withdrawals happening by the 30th already," she said, "and they've done all they can in preparing for computer malfunctions.
"They're even ready to do transactions the hard way, by writing everything down on paper."
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