The New Taiwan dollar pared losses on speculation exporters bought the currency with their overseas dollar earnings after it fell to the lowest since April 28.
Foreign investors' purchases of local stocks also lent support to the currency, said Lo Chung, assistant treasury manager at Chinese Bank (中華銀行) in Taipei.
"Exporters may have bought the local dollar when it fell beyond NT$31.40 against its US counterpart," said Lo. "Foreign buying of the stocks also provided some support to the Taiwan dollar. These would limit the declines in the Taiwan dollar."
The NT dollar dropped NT$0.011 to close at NT$31.383 against its US counterpart on the Taipei foreign exchange market. The currency may trade between NT$31.30 and NT$31.50 this week, Lo said.
Oversea investors were net buyers of the nation's stocks for a fifth straight day. Funds based outside of Taiwan have bought a net US$2.33 billion so far this month after selling a net US$787.4 million in April, according to stock exchange figures.
The NT dollar earlier dropped on speculation a government report tomorrow will say the nation's economy expanded in the first three months of the year at the slowest pace since the second quarter of 2003.
"It may be harder to aggressively buy the Taiwan dollar when the report may show slower growth," said Sadaaki Kondou, assistant general manager of the treasury department in Taipei at Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd, a unit of Japan's biggest lender.
The currency may fall to NT$31.50 this week, Kondou said.
The economy probably grew 3.2 percent from a year earlier in the January-to-March period, according to the median of eight economists' forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey.
The government on Feb. 24 lowered its growth forecast for this year to 4.2 percent from 4.6 percent, citing sluggish exports, which account for almost half of the nation's US$305 billion economy.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is