TAIPEI: Taiwan's central bank, the world's sixth-largest US treasury bonds holder, downplayed the US credit rating downgrade by Standard & Poor's, saying it was subjective.
Spain enjoying a better rating than Taiwan, Japan and China showed "the subjectivity of rating agencies' ratings and their failure to reflect a country's real economic scale, and financial market's depth, width and ability to issue debts," the central bank said in a statement late on Sunday.
Central bank deputy governor George Chou told Reuters in an interview last week it was monitoring global market risks and could adjust its reserves operations whenever necessary.
In a separate statement, the Ministry of Finance said that Taiwan's debt to GDP ratio was relatively healthy compared to other countries.
Taiwan does not hold any foreign debt so will not face a debt crisis, it said.
The comments from the central bank and the finance ministry came after President Ma Ying-jeou said on Saturday that his government was closely monitoring developments in global financial markets amid the US and euro zone debt problems and urged investors to stay calm.
At 0303 GMT on Monday, Taiwan's main stock index plunged 2.4 percent to 7,663.32, a near one-year intraday low.
Copyright Reuters, 2011
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