The central bank yesterday said that it had met with 36 local lenders and the National Federation of Credit Cooperatives to make sure they comply with credit control measures when processing mortgage applications.
The central bank made the closed-door meeting known in a statement yesterday to highlight its resolve to cool the local property market.
Housing transactions last month surged 28 percent month-on-month to 21,385 units in the nation’s six special municipalities, as negative effects of a local COVID-19 outbreak faded.
Photo: Hung Jui-chin, Taipei Times
The central bank reminded lenders to stand by its ban on grace periods for purchases of second homes in the six special municipalities, as well as in Hsinchu county and city.
The removal of grace periods on Friday last week and two previous waves of credit controls were intended to prevent funds from flowing into the local property market, which has seen a boom amid global monetary easing, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said.
The policymaker also urged lenders to implement risk pricing practices and avoid cutthroat competition to win customers.
Lenders should also warn borrowers of potential interest rate increases when global central banks reverse their loose monetary policy stances, the central bank said.
The US Federal Reserve has indicated that it plans to taper its bond purchasing program later this year and raise interest rates as the US economy emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yang on Thursday said that credit controls are not effective in curbing housing transactions, though they have achieved the goal of maintaining the nation’s financial stability.
Housing transactions in Taipei last month soared 28 percent month-on-month to 2,487 units, while Taoyuan and Taichung reported advances of 26 percent and 37 percent to 3,757 and 4,011 units respectively.
Housing deals in Tainan and Kaohsiung advanced 19 percent and 41 percent each to 2,221 and 3,677 units respectively.
Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) said the market would need more time to assimilate the ban on grace periods.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) shares yesterday notched their best two-day rally on record, as investors flock to the Taiwanese chip designer on excitement over its tie-up with Google. The Taipei-listed stock jumped 8.59 percent, capping a two-session surge of 19 percent and closing at a fresh all-time high of NT$1,770. That extended a two-month rally on growing awareness of MediaTek’s work on Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs), which are chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. It also highlights how fund managers faced with single-stock limits on their holding of market titan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are diversifying into other AI-related firms.
RSS