JPMorgan Chase & Co recommended investors buy the Thai baht and New Taiwan dollar on expectations that foreign direct investment will help buoy demand for assets.
The Thai government and Taiwan's top economic planner expect higher foreign investment, helping bolster economic growth.
Thailand's SET index of stocks has climbed 10 percent this year and the TAIEX index has risen 2 percent this month.
"Corporate earnings should improve consequently as the investment cycle improves," Claudio Piron, head of Asian foreign-exchange research at JPMorgan in Singapore, said in an interview.
"That will attract foreign inflows, helping asset markets and Asian currencies." The Thai baht traded at 38.52 at 10:40am in Bangkok and the New Taiwan dollar was at NT$31.538 versus the US currency.
The baht may strengthen 7.1 percent to 35.80 by the end of the third quarter and the New Taiwan dollar will probably rise 8.4 percent to NT$28.90, Piron said.
Taiwan's economy may grow 5 percent this year, Hu Sheng-cheng (
The projection compares with a government forecast of 4.56 percent and a predicted 5.93 percent growth last year, which would be the fastest in seven years.
Increasing corporate and government investment will sustain economic expansion as the island has NT$500 billion ($16 billion) of investment from abroad, Hu said.
Chinese Petroleum Corp (
Formosa Heavy Industries Corp (台塑重工) applied to the Industrial Development Bureau for permission to build a NT$130 billion steel mill, local media reported on Jan. 1, without saying where it got the information. The company is part of Formosa Plastics Group (台塑), the nation's biggest industrial company.
Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd, Japan's second-largest tiremaker, has bought land from Amata Corp to build its first tire plant in Thailand, the Thai developer of industrial estates said on Feb. 15.
The Thai government expects increased foreign investment in the auto industry to boost production 37.5 percent to 1.1 million units this year from a year ago.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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