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.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS