The New Taiwan dollar erased earlier losses as stocks rose and a gaining yen helped boost the competitiveness of the country's products against rival goods from Japan.
Equities rebounded after the benchmark TAIEX yesterday fell to a nine-month low and the government decided to ease access for overseas institutional investors to the market. The yen had its biggest gain in a week against the dollar as a report showed Japan's first-quarter economic growth was faster than expected.
"The NT dollar gained after Taiwanese stocks rebounded and the yen rose above 114" to the dollar, said Lin Kuen-liang, a currency trader at Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank.
The NT dollar rose NT$0.03 to close at NT$33.683 on the Taipei foreign exchange market yesterday on a turnover of US$594 million.
A gaining yen raised the cost of Japanese goods for consumers abroad, boosting demand for rival products from Taiwan and helping to push the island's currency higher.
The yen and NT dollar have had a correlation of 0.926 this month, according to Bloomberg data. A value of 1 would mean they moved in tandem.
The Ministry of Finance yesterday eased regulations for foreign investors, including allowing local banks to provide same-day financing for trading and overseas institutions to remit money abroad from the sale of borrowed shares.
Foreign investors would be permitted to remit abroad capital gains from short sales, the ministry said, adding that the new measure was part of the government's efforts to internationalize domestic markets.
The changes would also relax foreign-investor trading in futures markets and give them permission to purchase "call" options and sell "put" options.
In addition, they would no longer need approval from the central bank's foreign exchange department for investment in the domestic stock market, the ministry said.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun has ordered the measures to take effect within two months.
The changes come after foreign investors ditched stocks on the Taiwan Stock Exchange 15 days in a row, selling at least NT$100 billion (US$2.97 billion) over that period and leading prices to a nine-month low on Monday.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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