The nation’s annual growth of M1B, a broad measure of money supply that includes currency held by the public and deposits, fell for the first time in one-and-a-half years, the central bank said yesterday.
The central bank attributed the subdued increase of 26.17 percent to a higher base effect because the Lunar New Year holidays fell in January last year, as well as to continuous net capital inflows.
“Liquidity was still affluent [last month],” Chen E-dawn (陳一端), deputy chief of the central bank’s economic research department, told a media briefing yesterday, adding that money supply usually increases during Lunar New Year.
The broader M2 monetary gauge, which includes M1B, time deposits, time savings deposits, foreign currency deposits and mutual funds, also saw reduced annual growth of 5.4 percent last month, the central bank’s data showed.
Chen declined to comment on whether liquidity in the investment market has been subdued. Instead, she said that the reduced increase in money supply was a result of seasonal influences.
According to central bank data, the monthly growth of demand deposits slowed last month as balances increased only NT$1.2 billion to NT$9.6 trillion, compared with growth of between NT$200 billion and NT$300 billion on a monthly basis in the past year.
Moreover, time and savings deposits posted a slight decrease of NT$4 billion from December to last month and totaled more than NT$11.8 trillion, in contrast with monthly growth of more than NT$100 billion in the past year.
As investors usually transfer their capital from time and savings accounts to demand deposit accounts before investing in the stock market, the reduced growth in demand deposits and the slight contraction in time and savings deposits indicates that capital inflows to the stock market slowed.
In terms of direct and indirect finance, the total outstanding loans and investments of major financial institutions increased 0.23 percent year-on-year last month, lower than the 0.73 percent growth in December, the central bank said.
FALLING BEHIND: Samsung shares have declined more than 20 percent this year, as the world’s largest chipmaker struggles in key markets and plays catch-up to rival SK Hynix Samsung Electronics Co is laying off workers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand as part of a plan to reduce its global headcount by thousands of jobs, sources familiar with the situation said. The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of its workforces in those markets, although the numbers for each subsidiary might vary, said one of the sources, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Job cuts are planned for other overseas subsidiaries and could reach 10 percent in certain markets, the source said. The South Korean company has about 147,000 in staff overseas, more than half
TECH PARTNERSHIP: The deal with Arizona-based Amkor would provide TSMC with advanced packing and test capacities, a requirement to serve US customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is collaborating with Amkor Technology Inc to provide local advanced packaging and test capacities in Arizona to address customer requirements for geographical flexibility in chip manufacturing. As part of the agreement, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, would contract turnkey advanced packaging and test services from Amkor at their planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, a joint statement released yesterday said. TSMC would leverage these services to support its customers, particularly those using TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, it said. The companies would jointly define the specific packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated
An Indian factory producing iPhone components resumed work yesterday after a fire that halted production — the third blaze to disrupt Apple Inc’s local supply chain since the start of last year. Local industrial behemoth Tata Group’s plant in Tamil Nadu, which was shut down by the unexplained fire on Saturday, is a key linchpin of Apple’s nascent supply chain in the country. A spokesperson for subsidiary Tata Electronics Pvt yesterday said that the company would restart work in “many areas of the facility today.” “We’ve been working diligently since Saturday to support our team and to identify the cause of the fire,”
Sales RecORD: Hon Hai’s consolidated sales rose by about 20 percent last quarter, while Largan, another Apple supplier, saw quarterly sales increase by 17 percent IPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday reported its highest-ever quarterly sales for the third quarter on the back of solid global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) globally, said it posted NT$1.85 trillion (US$57.93 billion) in consolidated sales in the July-to-September quarter, up 19.46 percent from the previous quarter and up 20.15 percent from a year earlier. The figure beat the previous third-quarter high of NT$1.74 trillion recorded in 2022, company data showed. Due to rising demand for AI, Hon Hai said its cloud and networking division enjoyed strong sales
RSS