Credit control measures have achieved the goal of maintaining the nation’s financial stability, but are unlikely to make houses more affordable, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said yesterday.
Yang made the comments while fielding questions on the central bank’s operations at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee.
“The series of credit controls were intended to prevent money from overflowing into the real-estate market and straining the financial system in times of credit tightening,” the governor said, adding that the US Federal Reserve has indicated plans to taper its bond-buying program later this year and to hike interest rates following better employment figures.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Barring lenders from granting grace periods on second-home purchases in the six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County, was intended to prevent overleveraging on the part of individual buyers, Yang said.
Wealth management analysts have encouraged people to acquire real estate and take advantage of record-low interest rates, which average 1.31 percent for house loans.
“Micro adjustments” are necessary after two previous waves of credit controls failed to cool real-estate lending, Yang said.
The governor said that he partially agreed with the opinion of Highwealth Construction Corp (興富發) founder Cheng Chin-tien (鄭欽天) that credit controls reflect a boom in the property market.
However, developers would like to portray the market in a way that helps boost property sales and prices, Yang said.
Asked whether tightening measures would help make houses affordable again for ordinary people, the governor said that the goal has proved “unachievable” over the years and the central bank has instead sought to “induce a soft landing.”
Toward that end, the central bank is closely monitoring the market and would introduce adjustments if necessary, he added.
A central bank report shows that in the first half of the year, the bank intervened in the foreign-exchange market by buying US$8.73 billion of US dollars to slow the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar.
Exporters have said that profit erosion caused by a strong NT dollar, which has outperformed other Asian currencies this year.
The NT dollar has hovered between NT$27.5 and NT$28 against the US dollar in the past three months, the central bank said, adding that the NT dollar’s direction hinges on global demand for the US dollar and Taiwanese exports.
Strong exports would lend support to the local currency, while bond-buying tapering and interest rate hikes by the US Fed would bolster the US dollar, Yang said.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
RSS