Premier Tang Fei (
Tang made the remarks at a meeting with local businessmen.
"For businesses that have loan payments due in six months, the Ministry of Finance has asked banks to extend their loan payments another six months," said government spokeswoman Chung Chin (
In addition, the premier said the finance ministry will soon issue letters to banks to notify them about the interim measure, which will extend by half a year corporate loans scheduled to mature within the next six months.
The interim measure is aimed at helping non-electronics sectors out of their current liquidity difficulties, Tang said.
Local non-electronics industries have been caught in liquidity plight recently as banks generally favor electronics sectors, which are more profitable and are at lower risk of default when compared with the non-high-tech industries.
This is not the first time the premier has stepped in to help the business community with loan extensions.
A financial crisis in Taiwan from October 1998 to last March contributed to the financial squeeze on 19 major conglomerates and NT$230 billion worth of bad loans.
To maintain stability, the government moved in six months ago to bail the conglomerates out by deferring the deadline for their repayments.
Now, after one year, these efforts have failed and many financial institutions are under heavy pressure to write off these bad debts.
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