Asian currencies gained this week, led by the Singapore dollar, on speculation the region will keep attracting overseas investors to local stock markets.
Global funds bought more shares than they sold this week in Indonesia and Thailand and Philippine central bank Governor Amando Tetangco said a US Federal Reserve discount rate cut last week will provide relief to emerging markets.
South Korean Finance Minister Lim Young-rok said economic expansion is unlikely to falter amid US mortgage losses on Thursday.
The New Taiwan dollar fell 0.1 percent to NT$32.98 against the US dollar on Friday, Taipei Forex Inc said. The Taiwanese currency declined 0.2 percent this week.
The Singapore dollar rose 0.9 percent in the past five days to S$1.5241, the best weekly gain since May last year. Consumer prices climbed in July at the fastest pace in more than a decade, a report showed two days ago, suggesting the central bank will maintain a policy to strengthen the currency to curb inflation.
The Morgan Stanley Capital International Asia-Pacific Index of regional shares gained 8 percent this week, after a four-week slump.
All Asian currencies climbed against the yen as Japan, Asia's biggest economy, kept interest rates at 0.5 percent.
The Philippine central bank on Thursday kept its benchmark interest rate among the highest in Asia at 6 percent.
Tetangco said the strong peso, up 0.3 percent this week and almost 5 percent this year, is damping inflation by lowering the cost of imports. The peso closed at 46.710.
Elsewhere, the Indonesian rupiah gained 0.6 percent this week to 9,413 per US dollar and the Thai baht rose 0.6 percent onshore to 34.38 per dollar.
The yuan rose the most in more than six weeks as a central bank official said capital inflows pose a risk to the economy, spurring speculation the government will allow faster currency gains to cool growth.
The currency also gained as the CSI 300 Index of shares advanced to a record for a fifth day.
The yuan advanced 0.27 percent to 7.5666 against the US dollar as of 5:30pm in Shanghai, bringing its advance for the week to 0.38 percent.
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