The New Taiwan dollar had its worst month in seven years on concern that cooling demand in the US and Europe will hurt the nation’s exports.
The currency dropped a sixth straight week against the US dollar, the longest losing streak in more than a year, after the government cut its economic growth forecast and reported the smallest increase in export orders in five years.
“It’s a rotation of risk,” said Jimmy Koh, head of economic treasury research at United Overseas Bank Ltd in Singapore. “Over the last six months the rest of the world was holding up pretty well, but is now feeling the pinch on the US front, as reflected in their export numbers. You’re seeing that in Singapore, [South] Korea and Taiwan.”
The NT dollar declined 0.1 percent to NT$31.52 per US dollar as of the 4 pm close, the Taipei Forex Inc said. The currency, which touched a six-month low of NT$31.571 on Tuesday, has dropped 0.5 percent this week and 2.9 percent since the end of last month.
All of the 10 most-active Asian currencies outside Japan dropped against the US dollar this month, led by South Korea’s won, as overseas funds dumped stocks on concern that slowing global growth will damp demand for Asian exports just as central banks grapple with quickening inflation.
The won posted its biggest monthly decline since August 1998 and Malaysia’s ringgit had its worst month since the end of a US dollar link in 2005.
“It’s been a bad environment for stocks with persistent inflation eroding the value of assets and people have been disappointed with the growth numbers coming out of the region,” said Sean Callow, senior currency strategist at Westpac Banking Corp in Sydney. “With that comes a fading of confidence in currencies in the region as well.”
South Korea’s currency dropped 0.7 percent to 1,089 against the US dollar as of the 3pm close, Seoul Money Brokerage Services Ltd said, taking the decline in this month to 7.1 percent, Asia’s worst performer.
The ringgit, the second-biggest loser in the region, fell 4.1 percent this month and the NT dollar 2.6 percent.
Overseas investors sold more stocks than they bought this month in South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia, data compiled by Bloomberg shows.
South Korea’s central bank said yesterday that the current-account balance returned to a deficit last month as a weaker currency and rising oil prices increased the import bill. Policymakers have intervened in the market to curb losses in the currency.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts