BOJ leaves rates unchanged
Japan’s central bank said yesterday it had left its key interest rate unchanged at 0.3 percent, three weeks after reducing borrowing costs for the first time in seven years to tackle the recession.
“The outlook remains highly uncertain and given the slowdown in overseas economies and the turmoil in global financial markets, it will likely take some time for the necessary conditions for Japan’s economic recovery to be satisfied,” the Bank of Japan (BOJ) said in a statement.
“Economic activity has been increasingly sluggish due to the effects of earlier increases in energy and materials prices and the decrease in exports, and this situation will likely persist over the next several quarters,” it said.
Taiwanese shares rise
Taiwanese shares closed up 1.98 percent yesterday on bargain-hunting in late trade, helping recoup early heavy losses, dealers said.
The weighted index rose 81.17 points at 4,171.1 on turnover of NT$51.85 billion (US$1.55 billion).
The market opened down 3.11 percent as investors took cues from a 1.02 percent economic contraction for the third quarter and a Wall Street dive overnight, dealers said.
However, with the index falling below 4,000 points, bargain-hunters scrambled to pick up cheap stocks, particularly in the electronics sector, they said.
“The electronic subindex had fallen to a five-year low after recent sell-offs. It appeared very attractive,” Taiwan International Securities (金鼎證券) analyst Arch Shih (施博元) said.
Despite the rebound, Shih said volatility ahead was very likely.
“The economic contraction in the third quarter was just a beginning. We are expected to see more negative data over the next two quarters at the least,” he said. “Uncertainty over the global economic climate remains in place.”
FSC approves purchase
The Financial Supervisory Commission on Thursday gave the go-ahead for Standard Chartered Bank (Taiwan) Limited (渣打銀行) to acquire the debt-ridden Asia Trust and Investment Corp (亞洲信託), which it said should be completed by Dec. 27.
After the acquisition, Taipei-based Asia Trust, which has seven branches in Taiwan, would become a branch of Standard Chartered.
The move would raise the number of Standard Chartered outlets in Taiwan from 88 to 96, boost its assets to NT$582.9 billion and its net worth to NT$29.2 billion, the commission said.
The bank said: “The deal demonstrates our commitment to Taiwan, located in a strategically important place in north Asia.”
Standard Chartered is the fifth foreign bank to acquire Taiwanese banks in the past year.
NT dollar falls for second week
The New Taiwan dollar fell for a second week after a report showed the economy shrank in the third quarter, marking the start of what the government predicts will be the first recession since 2001.
The currency sank to this month’s low versus the US dollar after the central bank announced the smallest quarterly current-account surplus in three years. Global financial troubles have led investors to favor safer bets than emerging-market assets.
“We see weakness well into next year,” said Callum Henderson, head of foreign-exchange strategy at Standard Chartered Plc in Singapore. “The GDP was a lot weaker than most of the market expected. The current-account surplus fell sharply.”
“All that was negative in terms of the NT dollar,” Henderson said.
The NT dollar declined 0.9 percent this week to close at NT$33.388 on turnover of US$976 million yesterday after touching NT$33.55.
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