Chunghwa Post’s reported loss of NT$62.5 billion (US$1.9 billion) from stock investments came under scrutiny at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday, when the company briefed lawmakers about its capital management.
Statistics from Chunghwa Post showed that the company’s capital management department had 197 stock options under its management as of last month, with total investment topping NT$146.1 billion.
The company’s accumulated losses through these investments totaled NT$55.9 billion.
The company had also put NT$28 billion into investments managed by private financial consulting firms. These investments saw an aggregate loss of approximately NT$6.6 billion.
Chunghwa Post said the losses were still only on paper, as the company had not sold its stock options and officially written off the losses.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Ken-te (陳根德) said that Chunghwa Post’s capital management department was required by law to report to its president any stock option that has dropped in value by more than 30 percent.
He questioned whether the company had continued to pump money into stocks that had been suspended from trading.
Chen also questioned whether the board of directors and trustees had done its job in supervising the operations of the company, given that the company had incurred such significant losses.
Democratic Progressive Party legislators Yeh Yi-ching (葉宜津) and Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) also questioned whether part of the Postal Savings Fund was allocated to help the government expand the scale of its National Development Fund to NT$100 billion.
Most of the Postal Savings Fund comes from the savings of the post office’s account holders. The government uses the National Development Fund for a variety of investments.
Yeh said the Postal Savings Fund was the money of private citizens and that she would ask people who have accounts with the company to withdraw their funds immediately if the government planned to used them inappropriately.
In response, Chunghwa Post chairman Wu Min-yu (吳民佑) said the Postal Savings Fund amounted to about NT$4.4 trillion and that if the government intended to borrow money from the fund, it would need to provide a 100 percent guarantee.
In related news, the company confirmed yesterday that it would help distribute government-issued consumer vouchers in February to qualifying citizens and residents who have not received theirs by the Lunar New Year.
Those who receive the vouchers in February will be required to pick them up at post offices in the same administrative districts as their residencies.
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