Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行), the largest lender in the country, is to raise the benchmark one-year time savings deposit rate to a 15-year-high 1.715 percent from tomorrow following a surprise central bank rate hike.
The increase reflected a 12.5 basis-point key interest rate increase instituted by the central bank on Friday, Bank of Taiwan said.
The state-owned lender is also to raise its two-year time savings deposit rate and three-year time savings deposit rate by 0.125 percentage points to 1.750 percent and 1.785 percent respectively.
Photo: Lu Kuan-cheng, Taipei Times
Under the new rates, one-year time savings depositors who have NT$1 million (US$31,291) in their accounts would receive more than NT$17,280 in annual interest payments, up from NT$16,020, based on compound-rate calculations, Bank of Taiwan said.
On Thursday, the central bank said it would raise key interest rates the next day in light of higher Taiwan Power Co (台電) electricity rates effective from April 1.
After the central bank’s latest rate hike, Taiwan’s benchmark discount rate has increased to 2 percent.
The central bank said it has revised consumer price index growth to 2.16 percent for this year, above the 2 percent alert level it set as well as an earlier 1.89 percent forecast in December last year, prompting it to raise rates for the first time since March 2022.
The central bank’s decision came as a surprise after the US Federal Reserve on Wednesday left interest rates unchanged.
With the changes, Taiwan’s rate on accommodations with collateral has risen to 2.375 percent, while accommodations without collateral increased to 4.25 percent, the central bank said.
From March 2022 to March last year, the central bank raised interest rates 75 basis points, which led Bank of Taiwan’s one-year time savings deposit rate to increase to 1.59 percent from 0.84 percent.
Bank of Taiwan had also increased interest payments on deposits of NT$1 million to almost NT$16,020 from about NT$8,340 a year, based on compound rate calculations, during the same period.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS