The legislature’s proposed bill to cap revolving interest rates on credit-card and cash-card loans will undercut Taiwan’s attractiveness to foreign investors and hurt the nation’s economy, two foreign trade organizations said in a joint statement yesterday.
The legislature last month passed the first reading of a bill to lower the interest rates that banks can charge on late credit card payments to 12.5 percent from current 20 percent stipulated by the Civil Code.
The bill still needs to pass two more readings by lawmakers.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham) and the European Chamber of Commerce Taipei (ECCT) said that lowering the cap on revolving credit would do more harm than good.
The two trade organizations said Taiwan was the only developed market in Asia aside from Japan with a statutory cap on interest rate. The 20 percent ceiling on revolving credit is not the highest in the region, they said, but lower than many other markets.
The AmCham-ECCT’s joint banking committee said the bill appeared to be “a sudden and arbitrary shift in regulatory policy” and had been criticized by many industry watchers as being influenced by political factors rather than economic considerations.
If the bill is passed, it “would raise serious doubts about the attractiveness of Taiwan’s investment climate and undermine Taiwan’s chances for ever developing into a regional financial hub,” the committee said.
It said the government must show leadership by preventing the bill from becoming “an ill-considered piece of legislation.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$7.5 billion into its US subsidiary, the Department of Investment Review said in a statement. The department approved TSMC’s application of investing in TSMC Arizona Corp, which is engaged in the manufacturing, sales, testing and design of IC and other semiconductor devices, it said. The latest capital injection follows a US$5 billion investment for TSMC Arizona approved in June. The chipmaker has broken ground on two advanced fabs in Arizona with aggregated investments approved by the department totaling US$24 billion thus far. According to TSMC, the first Arizona
The lethal hack of Hezbollah’s Asian-branded pagers and walkie-talkies has sparked an intense search for the devices’ path, revealing a murky market for older technologies where buyers might have few assurances about what they are getting. While supply chains and distribution channels for higher-margin and newer products are tightly managed, that is not the case for older electronics from Asia where counterfeiting, surplus inventories and complex contract manufacturing deals can sometimes make it impossible to identify the source of a product, analysts and consultants say. The response from the companies at the center of the booby-trapped gadgets that killed 37
FRIENDLY TAKEOVER: While Qualcomm Inc’s proposal to buy some or all of Intel raises the prospect of other competitors, Broadcom Inc is staying on the sidelines Qualcomm Inc has approached Intel Corp to discuss a potential acquisition of the struggling chipmaker, people with knowledge of the matter said, raising the prospect of one of the biggest-ever merger and acquisition deals. California-based Qualcomm proposed a friendly takeover for Intel in recent days, said the sources, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. The proposal is for all of the chipmaker, although Qualcomm has not ruled out buying some parts of Intel and selling off others. It is uncertain whether the initial approach would lead to an agreement and any deal is likely to come under close antitrust scrutiny
SECURITY CONCERNS: The proposed ban on Chinese autonomous vehicle software and hardware would go into effect with the 2027 and 2030 model years respectively The US Department of Commerce today is expected to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on US roads due to national security concerns, two sources said. US President Joe Biden’s administration has raised concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on US drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the Internet and navigation systems. The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the