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.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the