The central bank would wait for an opportune time to increase interest rates, which would depend on three factors, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said yesterday.
The bank would look at inflation, the effectiveness of loans for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and interest rates in other countries before raising rates, Yang said during a speech at an event in Taipei celebrating the 30th anniversary of the ROC Housing Association.
Monetary policy would be tightened, but flexibility would be maintained to cope with factors that might lead to a downturn in global sentiment, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing US-China trade conflict and disasters caused by climate change, he said.
Photo courtesy of the Central Bank
The spread of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is frustrating attempts to relieve a bottleneck in the global supply chain, so the bank would continue to monitor how this is affecting domestic inflation, he said.
It would also continue to monitor the recovery of SMEs that receive preferential interest rates until the middle of this year, he said.
Finally, it would look at rate hikes in other economies, since that would affect the domestic economy through cross-border movement of capital, he said.
Photo: CNA
Yang said that a recent surge in housing prices was largely due to four factors: strong investment, anticipatory purchases, speculation and rising material costs.
Last year there were 268,000 housing units for sale across the six special municipalities, representing an average annual increase of 7 percent, government statistics showed.
Tainan and Kaohsiung’s real-estate markets showed the greatest growth, with 10 percent more units listed for sale than in 2020, while these two cities, as well as Taoyuan and Taichung, recorded more real-estate transactions last year than anticipated in long-term projections.
The growth in those four municipalities’ real-estate markets was spurred by investment in their science parks, Yang said.
“For example, we saw rising housing prices in Kaohsiung after TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, 台積電] announced that it would build a factory there, which led to an increased demand for housing in the surrounding area,” he said.
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