The urban land price index for Taipei grew at slightly faster than elsewhere in Taiwan during the second and third quarters of last year, data released by the Ministry of the Interior on Friday showed.
The urban land price index — the weighted average land price of urban areas, which is measured every six months — rose 1.54 percent for Taipei in the April-to-September period compared with the previous six months, the data showed.
The increase reflected a relatively low comparison base in the previous six months, when initial fears over the COVID-19 pandemic hurt the city’s property market, and a stabilization of property prices later in the year, the ministry said in a statement.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
Taipei’s Nangang District (南港) saw the biggest gains of the city’s 12 districts, with its land prices rising 1.86 percent because of improving public transportation and a growing population fueled by development in the district, the ministry said.
The urban land price index for Taiwan as a whole rose 1.04 percent in the April-to-September period compared with the previous six months, and increased 1.21 percent from a year earlier.
The urban land price index is based on the median land price for residential and commercial property and industrial zones in a city or county to show land price fluctuations. The ministry releases the index data twice a year, in January and in July.
As for the five other special municipalities, the index rose 1.3 percent in New Taipei City, 1.09 percent in Tainan, 0.77 percent in Taoyuan, 0.76 percent in Taichung and 0.5 percent in Kaohsiung, the ministry’s data showed.
New Taipei City benefited from efforts to develop the MRT rail system, and Tainan was boosted by large investments in Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區).
The index for outlying Lienchiang County fell 0.09 percent from the previous period — the only one of Taiwan’s 16 other cities and counties to show a decline in prices.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to