Taiwan is not likely to replace Hong Kong as Asia’s financial center, as the nation has stricter regulations on foreign currency exchange and lags behind in terms of English proficiency, Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said yesterday.
“If we define an international financial center as a place with complete freedom of capital movement, Taiwan would not be one, as the nation aims to maintain the stability of the exchange rate and has rules and limitations on capital flow,” Koo said on the sidelines of an event in New Taipei City.
Taiwan’s non-English environment has also made it more difficult to attract international banks or financial agencies than Hong Kong or Singapore, he said.
Moreover, there are several fundamental differences between Taiwan and Hong Kong in terms of the taxation system and business environment, he added.
The commission is planning to allow banks to include 16 new products in their wealth management programs to attract wealthy investors, who could park their money in Taiwan, but it still needs to negotiate the matter with the central bank, as eight of the 16 products are related to interest rates or exchange rates, he said.
The commission would make a formal announcement by the end of this year after the two reach a consensus, he added.
The launch of such products would provide an incentive for local firms and international investors to park funds in Taiwan, he said.
Further deregulation of banks’ offshore banking units (OBUs) would provide further incentive, he added.
To limit risks, only banks with stronger financial fundamentals would be allowed to launch the products, which could be sold only to high net worth clients, Koo said last month.
Koo has proposed allowing domestic companies or individuals to open accounts at OBUs to apply for loans denominated in foreign currencies, which also needs approval from the central bank.
Taking out foreign-currency loans at OBUs would not be subject to regulations on the exchange rate, making fund flows more convenient, he said.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
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
RSS