Vietnam became Taiwan’s ninth-largest debtor at the end of the third quarter, as growing tensions between Washington and Beijing prompted many enterprises to move to the Southeast Asian country, boosting demand for funds, the central bank reported on Friday.
On a direct risk basis, loans extended to Vietnam by Taiwanese banks had climbed to US$14.86 billion by the end of the third quarter, from US$13.49 billion at the end of the second, the central bank said.
The UK dropped one place to become Taiwan’s 10th-largest debtor with debt to Taiwanese banks totaling US$14.56 billion, up from US$13.99 billion the previous quarter, it said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
On an ultimate risk basis, which calculates a country’s consolidated debt after risk transfers, Vietnam’s debt to Taiwanese banks was US$12.26 billion at the end of the third quarter, while the UK’s was US$10.31 billion, central bank data showed.
As an increasing number of enterprises seek to relocate their investments to Vietnam from China, interbank and syndicated loans in Vietnam rose in the third quarter, said Pan Ya-hui (潘雅慧), deputy head of the central bank’s Examination Department.
At the end of the third quarter, Taiwanese banks’ international claims totaled US$512.2 billion, up 1.61 percent from the second quarter, the central bank said.
On a direct risk basis, the US remained the largest debtor to Taiwanese banks with loans totaling US$116.32 billion, up from US$113.28 billion at the end of the second quarter, it said.
China was Taiwanese banks’ second-largest debtor with loans totaling US$58.77 billion, up from US$56.78 billion at the end of the second quarter, while Luxembourg was third with US$43.00 billion, followed by Hong Kong (US$36.17 billion), Japan (US$33.74 billion), Australia (US$25.18 billion), the Cayman Islands (US$18.95 billion) and Singapore (US$16.93 billion).
Loans extended by Taiwanese banks to the top 10 debtors totaled US$378.5 billion and accounted for 73.90 percent of the banks’ international claims, the central bank said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS