The central bank on Friday invited major local banks that handle mortgages to discuss issues such as the real-estate business outlook and credit risk controls for house and land purchases.
The initiative comes at a time when increased property speculation has raised eyebrows and various ministries are drafting new policies to curb speculative investment in real estate.
During the meeting, the central bank urged lenders to strictly review loan conditions, improve risk control, monitor the use of funds and enhance post-loan management. It also said that it would continue to pay attention to the real-estate market and banks’ credit risk, as the sound development of the property market is closely related to the nation’s financial stability — a message that suggested that the central bank might discuss whether to offer selective credit controls at its next quarterly policymaking meeting at the earliest.
Taiwan’s real-estate market has since June been gradually recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the nation’s effective control of the outbreak, a low interest rate environment and high market liquidity.
Even though it remains uncertain whether the market will boom in the near term, there is no doubt that housing prices in major cities are already so high that housing is one of the major issues that young people face, in addition to low wages and a bleak future.
Over the past few decades, the government has adopted numerous housing and tax reforms to slow the increase of real-estate prices, as policymakers recognized that the rise in prices might pose a problem not just for young people, but also for the nation’s long-term economic development and competitiveness.
However, the problem, first highlighted by the landmark Snails Without Shells movement in 1989, has never been solved. Ironically, despite the nation’s declining birthrate, developers and builders still continue to launch new housing projects, which has caused the number of vacant houses to rise.
However, should housing prices not have started to decline long ago if they were subject to the laws of supply and demand? To those who call on the government to respect the mechanism of the free market, skeptical of any government intervention, how are the persistently rising housing prices and the increasing number of construction projects reasonable?
People in Taiwan know that it is important to establish a healthy housing market, develop a sound rental market and provide more public housing to address the issue. The problem is that property owners generally do not want the government to regulate the rental market, and most people do not welcome any plans to build public housing in their neighborhood.
On the other hand, public land in urban areas is becoming increasingly scarce, making plots for public housing development difficult to find.
Past housing and tax reform measures have proved ineffective, and, in some cases, have generated adverse effects or encouraged tax evasion.
Regardless of what actions the government might take to deal with the issue, every move, including the central bank’s meeting with major mortgage operators, reflects the urgency and severity of the problem.
It also brings to light a persistent social discontent that keeps pushing policymakers to act.
If the government cannot make everyone rich enough to buy a home, it should at least work toward building a society in which resources are distributed more evenly.
The government should make efforts to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas, allowing everyone to enjoy the same convenience no matter where they live, and encourage people to pursue careers in their hometowns instead of moving to the big cities — measures that could offer an alternative to addressing the nation’s housing issue.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS