The Legislative Yuan resolved yesterday to refer a bill that would lower the interest rates for credit and cash cards to 12.5 percent to a one-month cross-party negotiation period.
The resolution was made on the legislative floor after party caucuses failed to reach a consensus on accepting the proposal by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) and others.
The legislature must complete the review or reject the proposal before the negotiation period ends.
The proposal had been stalled after Hsieh and Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) Chairman Sean Chen (陳冲) said last Tuesday night that they had reached a consensus to lower the interest rate ceiling from around 20 percent to 12.5 percent.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus had expressed dissatisfaction with Hsieh and Chen for announcing the consensus without negotiating the bill with the DPP.
The interest rate ceiling has been the subject of debate since the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee completed a preliminary review of a KMT proposal on March 19 that would cut the cap on all contracted interest rates from 20 percent to 9 percent above the central bank’s rate for three-month loans without collateral.
With the central bank’s short-term lending rate at 3.5 percent, that would be 12.5 percent.
The bill, however, drew strong opposition from foreign and domestic banks and analysts.
The Cabinet on March 23 said that the ceiling on interest rates for credit cards and cash cards should be capped at 15.5 percent instead, based on the maximum 12 percent interest rate for non-collateralized loans set by the central bank, plus a floating annual rate currently set at 3.5 percent. KMT lawmakers opposed the Cabinet’s decision.
Meanwhile, legislators approved an amendment to the Administrative Enforcement Act (行政執行法), allowing those who owe less than NT$100,000 in taxes to travel abroad.
However, those who have traveled abroad twice, even without knowing they have not paid off their tax, could still be banned from traveling.
The legislature also passed amendments to the Act Regulating Foreign Exchange (管理外匯條例) and the Act Governing International Financial Business (國際金融業務條例) that would authorize the Central Bank and the FSC to freeze accounts suspected of being used for money laundering or terrorist activity.
The amendment also authorized the legislature to reject bank and FSC decisions to freeze an account.
Lawmakers also agreed to abolish the minimum capital threshold for those starting a new company.
Under the current regulations in the Corporation Act (公司法), the minimum capital for a limited liability company is NT$500,000, while the minimum capital for an ordinary company is NT$250,000.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS