The New Taiwanese dollar rose to a three-week high as a global equities rally revived demand for emerging-market assets. Bonds fell.
Eight of the 10 most-traded Asian currencies outside Japan strengthened against the US dollar after the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its biggest gain since November. Citigroup Inc chief executive officer Vikram Pandit said yesterday the first two months of this year were profitable, spurring a 38 percent rise in the company shares.
“Sentiment has turned around for Asian currencies,” said Daniel Soh, an economist at Forecast Pte in Singapore. “Traders think that foreign appetite for emerging-Asian assets may revive sooner rather than later. People I talked to in private banking are saying their customers are snapping up shares.”
The NT dollar rose 0.7 percent to NT$34.36 as of 11:10am, Taipei Forex Inc said. It touched NT$34.239, the highest since Feb. 16.
“The central bank will enter the currency market when necessary to maintain order if there are irregularities in foreign-exchange trading,” central bank Governor Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南) said yesterday in a report to be presented to the legislature. The currency has been “relatively stable” compared with other regional currencies, the report said.
Asian stocks surged, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index rising the most in six weeks, after Citigroup said it was having its best quarter since 2007. The TAIEX index gained 2.6 percent.
Taiwanese 10-year bonds fell for a second day, on speculation the government may increase bond sales to help fund public works projects as tax revenue falls.
The government is considering options including issuing more bonds as tax revenue this year may fall by NT$100 billion (US$2.9 billion), the Economic Daily News reported yesterday. Taiwan slid into a recession in the fourth quarter, prompting the Cabinet to announce a four-year, NT$858.5 billion stimulus plan, including infrastructure spending.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS