The New Taiwan dollar yesterday continued to rise against its US counterpart, closing up NT$0.185 at NT$32.890 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
The close marked the NT's highest level in the last seven months. The local currency's high against the greenback this year was NT$32.75 in April.
PHOTO: CNA
"The momentum [of the strengthening NT dollar] is expected to continue to the end of this year amid the international climate of the weakening US dollar," said Yang Kung-yi (
Turnover was US$860 million yesterday, down from US$1.29 billion last Friday, according to the foreign exchange market in Taipei. But traders said the local currency may continue to gain ground amid a steady inflow of foreign capital to purchase Taiwan stocks.
The greenback has been weakening against the world's major currencies since the end of the US presidential election last week, driven by increasing concerns about how the US will deal with its worsening trade and budget deficits.
Yang did not expect any intervention from the nation's central bank to curb the appreciation of NT dollar for the time being, "as the bank would like a stronger currency to ease the nation's inflationary pressure," he said.
In response, a central bank official said it was not appropriate for him to make comments, but he stressed that the bank's policy is to respect the market mechanism.
"We respect the market's supply and demand mechanism to maintain a dynamic stability in the foreign exchange rate," George Chou (周阿定), the bank's foreign-exchange chief, told the Taipei Times.
Amid worries the strengthening NT dollar may dampen exports, Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yueh (
"The extent of the impact will depend on how much the currency of a specific competing country has appreciated," the Chinese-language press quoted Ho as saying.
"If its currency appreciation range is similar to our currency's appreciation range against the greenback, the impact will be limited," she added.
Wu Rong-I (
The NT dollar may trade at NT$32.67 versus the US dollar on average next year, rising from NT$33.57 on average this year, Wu said at another presentation in Taipei.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to