The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday that local financial firms — including banks and credit cooperatives — passed the commission’s stress test on liquidity risks, because lenders have strengthened their financial structure since the onset of the global financial crisis.
The commission said in a statement yesterday that domestic lenders showed an even stronger capability to withstand a more serious crisis than the global financial tsunami in 2008, citing various financial data.
Banks’ average non-performing loan ratio dropped to 0.91 percent at the end of June from 1.55 percent in June 2008, while their average capital adequacy ratio rose to 11.61 percent from 10.89 percent and their coverage ratio — loans covered by banks’ provisions and a gauge indicating sufficiency of bad loan reserves — climbed to 113.38 percent from 67.35 percent over the two-year period, it said.
The commission said it conducted the stress test on lenders’ liquidity risks recently to assess their ability to sustain a potential loss of funds ahead of the Dec. 31 expiration date of a blanket guarantee on all depositors’ savings introduced by the government in September 2008.
Beginning next year, the government should revert to guaranteeing deposits of up to NT$1.5 million (US$47,200), but the commission said yesterday it would raise the ceiling on deposit insurance to NT$3 million from Jan. 1 and extend the coverage to 98.6 percent for all depositors.
The commission added that a proposal to expand deposit insurance to cover foreign-currency accounts and interest on deposits is awaiting legislative review.
Taiwan’s technology protection rules prohibits Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) from producing 2-nanometer chips abroad, so the company must keep its most cutting-edge technology at home, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks in response to concerns that TSMC might be forced to produce advanced 2-nanometer chips at its fabs in Arizona ahead of schedule after former US president Donald Trump was re-elected as the next US president on Tuesday. “Since Taiwan has related regulations to protect its own technologies, TSMC cannot produce 2-nanometer chips overseas currently,” Kuo said at a meeting of the legislature’s
GEOPOLITICAL ISSUES? The economics ministry said that political factors should not affect supply chains linking global satellite firms and Taiwanese manufacturers Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) asked Taiwanese suppliers to transfer manufacturing out of Taiwan, leading to some relocating portions of their supply chain, according to sources employed by and close to the equipment makers and corporate documents. A source at a company that is one of the numerous subcontractors that provide components for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet products said that SpaceX asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan because of geopolitical risks, pushing at least one to move production to Vietnam. A second source who collaborates with Taiwanese satellite component makers in the nation said that suppliers were directly
Top Taiwanese officials yesterday moved to ease concern about the potential fallout of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, making a case that the technology restrictions promised by the former US president against China would outweigh the risks to the island. The prospect of Trump’s victory in this week’s election is a worry for Taipei given the Republican nominee in the past cast doubt over the US commitment to defend it from Beijing. But other policies championed by Trump toward China hold some appeal for Taiwan. National Development Council Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) described the proposed technology curbs as potentially having
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list