In response to a noticeable fall in the local currency a day earlier on the foreign exchange market, the central bank yesterday denied speculation that it had interfered in the market despite efforts to stem the inflow of hot money.
“The value of the New Taiwan dollar is decided by market forces and the central bank did not interfere to make it weaker,” central bank deputy governor George Chou (周阿定) told a legislative committee meeting.
“After talking with several foreign institutional investors, we found that the influx of speculative money had slowed down and more than NT$300 billion [US$9.51 billion] in funds remitted into Taiwan is currently deposited in local banks,” Chou said.
As to the question of whether Taiwanese companies have also been lining up to speculate on a rising local currency, he said the central bank would closely monitor the situation.
In a bid to ease a noticeable influx of hot money, the central bank has been monitoring the movement of foreign institutional investors since the beginning of the year.
The bank has named 20 of them on its “watch list.”
Central bank governor Peng Fai-nan (彭淮南) has repeatedly asked foreign institutional investors to buy Taiwanese shares or take their idle money out of Taiwan in an effort to prevent them from taking advantage of an appreciating local currency and to avoid a possible asset bubble.
The NT dollar gained ground against the US dollar in Taipei trading yesterday, rising NT$0.089 to close NT$31.450.
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],”
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
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