Taiwan’s central bank held interest rates steady with a watchful eye on inflation, declining to join the U.S. Federal Reserve and a growing number of its Asian counterparts in starting to ease monetary policy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan) kept its benchmark discount rate at 2.000% on Thursday, as expected in a poll of six analysts by The Wall Street Journal. It maintained its secured loan rate and unsecured loan rate at 2.375% and 4.250%, respectively.
Read more
Taiwan
Russian hacker groups briefly disrupted Taiwanese financial platforms including the stock exchange and lender Mega Financial Holding Co.’s website, exposing the vulnerability of the island to foreign cyberattacks, Bloomberg News reported. Two groups that go by the handles “NoName057” and “RipperSec” on Telegram swamped targeted websites with a so-called Distributed Denial of Service attack, which caused unstable connection issues for the platforms Thursday afternoon, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said Friday.
Read more
Taiwan’s central bank held interest rates steady as cooling inflation and solid economic growth give it space to keep policy settings unchanged for now, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan) kept its benchmark discount rate at 2.000% on Thursday, as expected in a poll of seven analysts by The Wall Street Journal. It maintained its secured loan rate and unsecured loan rate at 2.375% and 4.250%, respectively. The Taiwanese central bank attributed the decision to cooling inflation and a solid outlook on its economy.
Read more
Life insurers in Taiwan are issuing an unprecedented amount of bonds that pose more risks to investors, as they rush to improve their finances before a deadline to shore up capital, Bloomberg News reported. Already in 2024, Taiwan’s seven major insurance firms have sold $2.4 billion of subordinated notes that put investors behind other debt holders for claims on assets in the event of any bankruptcy. That’s a record for the first half of a year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Read more
Taiwan expects to triple its economic growth rate this year as strong demand for new technology such as artificial intelligence boosts the island’s exports, The Wall Street Journal reported. The economy expanded at a rapid 6.56% in the first three months of the year, outpacing most of its peers, according to official data. That was up from the 6.51% growth estimated in April. Thursday’s release confirmed that Taiwan’s economy is off to a strong start this year, as economists had widely expected.
Taiwan's biggest earthquake since 1999 is likely to cause some disruption across Asia's semiconductor supply chain, analysts said, after chipmakers from TSMC to UMC halted some operations to inspect facilities and relocate employees, Reuters reported. The powerful 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan's eastern coast near Hualien County on Wednesday morning, killing nine people and injuring 800.
Read more
China's "reunification" with Taiwan is inevitable, President Xi Jinping said in his New Year's address on Sunday, striking a stronger tone than he did last year with less than two weeks to go before the Chinese-claimed island elects a new leader, Reuters reported. The Jan. 13 presidential and parliamentary elections are happening at a time of fraught relations between Beijing and Taipei. China has been ramping up military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims over democratically governed Taiwan.
Read more
The recent collapse of U.S. regional banks might not grow into a global financial crisis given their small scale and less complex assets, but more peers might turn into zombie banks if not properly regulated, the central bank said on Facebook, Taipei Times reported. Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) bankruptcy might not lead to a systemic crisis like Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest U.S.
Taiwan's central bank said on Wednesday it will not adopt foreign exchange control measures and that foreign exchange management measures are enough to maintain financial market stability, Reuters reported. The Taiwan dollar has, like other major Asian currencies, depreciated sharply in recent weeks due to aggressive interest rate hikes in the United States and U.S. dollar strength as well as worries over slowing global economic growth.
Read more
Taiwan’s financial exposure to Sri Lanka, which declared bankruptcy earlier this month, was NT$3 billion (US$100.28 million) as of the end of last month, with most of it in the banking and the asset-management sectors, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said in a meeting on Thursday, the Taipei Times reported. Ten local banks had loans totaling NT$350 million — NT$290 million to Sri Lankan companies and NT$60 million to the nation’s financial institutions — as of the end of last month, down 44.6 percent from a year earlier, a commission tally showed.
Read more