Eurozone banks are toughening their requirements of prospective mortgage borrowers, a European Central Bank (ECB) survey published yesterday showed, although demand for home purchase loans continued to swell.
Credit standards — the boxes house-hunters have to check to receive a mortgage — tightened by 3 percent between January and last month, lenders said.
Meanwhile, “net demand for housing loans continued to increase in the first quarter, driven mainly by the low general level of interest rates,” the ECB said.
Although demand for other forms of consumer borrowing also grew, companies’ appetite for credit was only “stable” compared with the previous quarter, marking time after continuous increases since early 2015.
January’s round of the quarterly poll of almost 150 banks had forecast a slowdown in demand for loans, as weaker economic indicators pointed to slowing growth in the eurozone.
“Hard” data and “soft” pointers from surveys have both confirmed that the weaker expansion seen late last year has persisted into this year.
The ECB last month lowered its annual growth forecast for this year by 0.6 points to 1.1 percent — following in the footsteps of organizations such as the IMF.
It blamed a familiar litany of culprits, including uncertainty over Brexit and trade disputes between the US, China and the EU.
Frankfurt policymakers predict a resurgence in the second half, ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos told European Parliament lawmakers last week.
Meanwhile, Portuguese Minister of Finance Mario Centeno — who leads regular Eurogroup meetings of treasury bosses from the single currency area — last week said that a Brexit deal and trade truces between Washington, Beijing and Brussels could help lift the clouds.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group