Taiwan opens door for mainland investment

Taiwan's financial regulatory body has eased restrictions on remittance flow from the island to the Chinese mainland to help boost mainland investment.

Taiwan's financial supervisory authority announced Tuesday apart from unauthorized direct investment, securities investment and other unlawful remittances, the remittances could be made to the mainland regardless of their usage.

Remittances from the island to the mainland were previously subjected to 15 restrictions, for example, it must be used for donation or export bill purchase or meet insurance payment quotas, local media reported Wednesday.

Under the new rules, all people from the mainland can open a demand or fixed deposit account in both New Taiwan dollars or foreign currency.

Remittances to the mainland are limited to 5 million U.S. dollars annually per person, the rules read.

Mainland people without Taiwan's residence permit can buy and sell real property on the island upon approval from authority. They can apply bank loans of no more than 50 percent of the real property's price, according to the rules.

Figures from Taiwan authority showed, remittance value increased by 34 percent on average each year for the past four years. A combined equivalent of more than 10 trillion New Taiwan dollars (303.5 billion U.S. dollars) flowed between the mainland and Taiwan in 2008.

With the help of the new rules, the remittance value was expected to increase by more than 50 percent this year to hit 15 trillion New Taiwan dollars.

In 2002, mainland-based commercial banks officially started remittance and letter of credit business with the offshore bank units (OBU) of Taiwan-based banks. The business was further opened with the domestic bank units (DBU) in Taiwan in 2003.

Taiwan authority opened up the island to Chinese mainland investment Tuesday with 100 categories of manufacturing, service and infrastructure sectors in the initial opening-up list, which was an historic breakthrough in realizing two-way cross-Straits investments.

Source: Xinhua