The New Taiwan dollar completed its first weekly gain in a month after European leaders pledged to support Greece’s efforts to regain control of its finances, bolstering demand for emerging-market assets.
The NT dollar gained 0.3 percent from a week ago to close at NT$32.10 against its US counterpart yesterday, Taipei Forex Inc said.
Trading volume rose to US$623 million from US$597 million on Thursday, data from Taipei Forex showed.
The foreign exchange and bonds market will be closed next week because of the Lunar New Year holiday.
“The marginal strengthening that followed Monday’s decline was in line with improved global sentiment given that the EU decided to provide support for Greece,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, chief investment strategist at SJS Markets Ltd in Hong Kong. “However, the lack of domestic news and approaching the holiday break led to sideways trading and very limited volatility.”
The volume of local currency in circulation was expected to surge to a record NT$1.5 trillion (US$46.7 billion) yesterday, the central bank said.
The rise was mainly attributable to an increased public demand for cash in the period leading up to the Lunar New Year, bank officials said.
Based on the bank’s statistics, the volume of currency in circulation has been rising by NT$10 billion per day since the start of this month, topping NT$1.48 trillion for the first time on Thursday.
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
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