Taiwan remained the fifth-largest net creditor in the world at the end of last year as the nation’s net international investment position (NIIP) reached a new high, the central bank said on Tuesday.
NIIP is the difference between a country’s external financial assets and its external financial liabilities.
At the end of last year, Taiwan’s external assets totaled US$2.492 trillion and its external liability was US$1.121 trillion.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA-EFE
These figures meant that Taiwan’s NIIP reached a record of US$1.371 trillion, up US$23.25 billion — or 1.7 percent — from a year earlier, the bank said.
External liability includes government and private debt, with external assets held by public entities and legal residents also taken into account for NIIP calculations.
The bank said that Taiwan’s NIIP trailed Japan’s US$3.7210 trillion, Germany’s US$3.1280 trillion, Hong Kong’s US$2.1528 trillion and China’s US$2.1503 trillion.
Hong Kong rose one notch in the rankings, replacing China as the third-largest net creditor worldwide as the territory’s assets rose and liability fell, the central bank said.
Taiwan’s net assets at the end of last year rose 10.5 percent from a year earlier, with life insurance companies holding more foreign securities, the bank said.
Taiwan’s net liability rose 23.5 percent, as the value of securities held by foreign investors expanded significantly, it said.
Last year, the TAIEX soared 22.8 percent from a year earlier, largely driven by ample liquidity, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, it said.
In addition to a high-flying equity market, the expanded external liability also resulted from an improved bond market, further pushing up the value of assets held by foreign investors, it said.
The US remained the largest net debtor in the world at the end of last year, with external liabilities hitting a new high of more than US$14 trillion, the central bank said.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
RSS