The central bank yesterday set interest rates at 1 percent to 1.5 percent for funds to aid small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, in an attempt to ward off a credit crunch.
The aid program, tentatively set at NT$200 billion (US$6.6 billion), as the monetary policymaker promised last week, would be available from April 1 and continue through the next 12 months to prevent cash-strapped firms from shutting operations and laying off workers, Department of Banking Director-General Chen E-dawn (陳一端) told a media briefing last night.
Central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said on Thursday last week that the bank would meet with local financial institutions to work out lending terms in a timely manner.
Photo: Reuters
The liquidity injection and a rate cut of 25 basis points are the bank’s response measures to help local firms and households withstand the virus outbreak, which has wreaked havoc on airlines, travel agencies, hotels, retail stores and recreational facilities.
The bank caps borrowing costs at 1 percent for special loans of up to NT$2 million and no more than 1.5 percent for loans of up to NT$6 million, Chen said, adding that the program might go in conjunction with other government-backed relief and stimulus measures.
“Companies with cash needs may take out loans and lenders should be supportive to meet their social responsibility” at a difficult time, Chen said.
While the market remains awash with liquidity, the pace of growth has slowed, as money supply data released yesterday showed, the bank said.
The narrow money supply gauge of M1B, which refers to cash and cash equivalents, last month increased 7 percent from a year earlier, slowing from growth of 7.61 percent in January, the bank said.
The broad measure of M2, which includes savings deposits, time savings deposits, foreign-currency deposits and M1B, showed a similar trend, with a 4.35 percent pickup, compared with 4.6 percent in January, the data showed.
Capital flight from the local bourse and the New Taiwan dollar accounted for the slowdown, the bank said.
Savings deposits by foreign funds stood at NT$170.1 billion last month, the lowest since July 2017 following capital outflows of US$3.89 billion, it said.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS