Credit control measures have achieved the goal of maintaining the nation’s financial stability, but are unlikely to make houses more affordable, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said yesterday.
Yang made the comments while fielding questions on the central bank’s operations at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee.
“The series of credit controls were intended to prevent money from overflowing into the real-estate market and straining the financial system in times of credit tightening,” the governor said, adding that the US Federal Reserve has indicated plans to taper its bond-buying program later this year and to hike interest rates following better employment figures.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Barring lenders from granting grace periods on second-home purchases in the six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County, was intended to prevent overleveraging on the part of individual buyers, Yang said.
Wealth management analysts have encouraged people to acquire real estate and take advantage of record-low interest rates, which average 1.31 percent for house loans.
“Micro adjustments” are necessary after two previous waves of credit controls failed to cool real-estate lending, Yang said.
The governor said that he partially agreed with the opinion of Highwealth Construction Corp (興富發) founder Cheng Chin-tien (鄭欽天) that credit controls reflect a boom in the property market.
However, developers would like to portray the market in a way that helps boost property sales and prices, Yang said.
Asked whether tightening measures would help make houses affordable again for ordinary people, the governor said that the goal has proved “unachievable” over the years and the central bank has instead sought to “induce a soft landing.”
Toward that end, the central bank is closely monitoring the market and would introduce adjustments if necessary, he added.
A central bank report shows that in the first half of the year, the bank intervened in the foreign-exchange market by buying US$8.73 billion of US dollars to slow the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar.
Exporters have said that profit erosion caused by a strong NT dollar, which has outperformed other Asian currencies this year.
The NT dollar has hovered between NT$27.5 and NT$28 against the US dollar in the past three months, the central bank said, adding that the NT dollar’s direction hinges on global demand for the US dollar and Taiwanese exports.
Strong exports would lend support to the local currency, while bond-buying tapering and interest rate hikes by the US Fed would bolster the US dollar, Yang said.
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
Taiwanese artificial intelligence (AI) server makers are expected to make major investments in Texas in May after US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office and amid his rising tariff threats, Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (TEEMA, 台灣電子電機公會) chairman Richard Lee (李詩欽) said yesterday. The association led a delegation of seven AI server manufacturers to Washington, as well as the US states of California, Texas and New Mexico, to discuss land and tax issues, as Taiwanese firms speed up their production plans in the US with many of them seeing Texas as their top option for investment, Lee said. The
RSS