Bank loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) rose NT$56.2 billion (US$1.79 billion) in November last year, the third-highest increase of the year, data compiled by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) showed yesterday.
As of November, aggregated SME loans totaled NT$9.69 trillion, accounting for 65.15 percent of all bank-issued corporate loans, with a 0.24 percent nonperforming loan ratio, flat from a month earlier, commission data showed.
In the first 11 months of last year, banks boosted SME loans by NT$406.4 billion, exceeding the commission’s NT$380 billion goal by nearly 7 percent, it said.
Photo: An Rong Xu, Bloomberg
The annual increase in SME loans met the commission’s target every year for the past 16 years, except for during the 2008 global financial crisis, commission data showed.
Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank (台北富邦銀行) recorded the largest increase in SME loans during the 11 months at NT$74.9 billion, mainly due to the bank’s merger with Jih Sun International Bank (日盛銀行) in April, which allowed it to add NT$31.5 billion of Jih Sun’s lending to its SME loan book.
After Taipei Fubon, Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行), Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行), E. Sun Commercial Bank (玉山銀行) and Bank SinoPac (永豐銀行) also recorded sizeable expansions, adding about NT$56.05 billion, NT$46.62 billion, NT$43.21 billion and NT$34.08 billion to their SME loan book during the January-to-November period respectively, the commission said.
In related news, the nation’s credit card spending in the first 11 months of last year rose 21.66 percent annually to a record NT$3.84 trillion, exceeding the full-year level of NT$3.49 trillion in 2022, commission data showed last week.
As of November, the number of credit cards in circulation in Taiwan totaled 57.96 million, an increase of 170,000 from the previous month, with the ratio of effective cards standing at 64.94 percent, up 0.26 percentage points from a month earlier, the data showed.
Total credit card spending for last year is projected to exceed the NT$4 trillion mark, the commission said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using 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
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
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
RSS