New housing loans from five leading banks nationwide last month reached their lowest levels since February, as many home buyers rushed to complete real-estate transactions in July to avoid the government’s new price-registration policy, the central bank said yesterday.
However, the average interest rate of new house-purchasing loans from the five leading banks reached 1.903 percent last month, the highest level since January 2009, an indication the government has been continuing to cool down the speculations in the house market, central bank data showed.
The banks — Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行), Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行), Land Bank of Taiwan (土地銀行), Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南商業銀行) and First Commercial Bank (第一銀行) — made NT$45.78 billion (US$1.55 billion) in new housing loans last month, the central bank said in its monthly statement.
The NT$45.78 billion in loans was NT$9.95 billion lower than the NT$55.73 billion posted in June, the bank said.
“Many people rushed to finish their real-estate transactions before Aug. 1 to avoid registration for real-estate transaction prices,” Chen E-dawn (陳一端), deputy head of the bank’s economic research department, told a press conference.
The government launched registration of real-estate transaction prices on Aug. 1, a move it views as a first step in enhancing transparency in the real-estate market.
Chen said the move made housing loans in July higher than normal case, while those for last month were much lower.
In a bid to cool down property speculation, the government also asked local lenders not to pursue high housing loans by further lowering their interest rates, Chen said.
This made the average interest rate of new house-purchasing loans from five leading banks rise to 1.903 percent last month, from the 1.892 percent that was recorded in July, the central bank’s data showed.
Chen said the number of building permits issued by the government dropped 2.33 percent from a year ago in the first seven months of the year, reflecting a slowing property market.
The annual growth of construction loans also showed the downturn trend for last month, central bank data showed.
Loans for construction grew 8.68 percent to NT$1.484 trillion last month from a month earlier, lower than the 10.06 percent rise recorded in July, statistics showed.
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
Japan approved ￥631.5 billion (US$3.97 billion) in additional subsidies to hasten Rapidus Corp’s entry into the high-stakes artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaking arena, ramping up support for a project widely regarded as a long shot. The capital is intended to bankroll Rapidus’ work for information technology firm Fujitsu Ltd, one of the initial customers that Tokyo hopes would get the signature endeavor off the ground. The new money raises the fees and investments that the government is injecting into the start-up to ￥2.6 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year to March next year, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and
RSS