The nation’s monetary aggregates posted modest gains last month as people transferred time and savings deposits to passbook savings accounts and some channeled funds to the local bourse, the central bank said yesterday.
The narrower M1B gauge, which refers to currency held by the public and demand deposits, rose 1.88 percent last month from a month earlier, said Dawn Chen (陳一端), deputy chief of the central bank’s economic research department.
The broad M2 money supply measure, which includes M1B and quasi-money, namely time deposits, time savings deposits and foreign currency deposits, edged up 0.74 percent last month from the previous month. However, the year-on-year growth in M1B accelerated to 2.71 percent and M2 slowed to 6.19 percent last month from the previous month, Chen said, citing seasonal factors and a higher base effect.
Chen said the central bank’s loose monetary policy appeared to be successful in directing idle funds to the stock market, as seen in the rallies on the TAIEX.
Money wired to securities delivery accounts jumped NT$44.5 billion (US$1.31 billion) to NT$774.4 billion last month, while the stock index rebounded from 4,260 points at the start of the month to 4,557 at the end.
For the first time since 2007, demand deposits grew 3.22 percent last month, another encouraging sign, Chen said.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained