The central bank yesterday sold NT$40 billion (US$1.26 billion) in 10-year bonds at a yield of 1.228 percent — the lowest in its history — in an auction, indicating that liquidity in the market is still abundant.
The bank said in a statement that the sale of the securities — maturing on Sept. 21, 2020 — attracted bids for 1.86 times the amount of debt on offer, compared with 1.55 times for the sale of 10-year bonds in June. The bank was commissioned by the Ministry of Finance to auction the 10-year bonds.
MOST FOR DEBT
Of the total bonds scheduled to be issued on Tuesday next week, NT$35.4 billion will be used to finance the government’s debt and the remaining NT$4.6 billion to cope with special budget needs, the finance ministry said in a separate statement.
The banking industry accounted for 50.87 percent of the winning bidders, followed by the securities sector at 39.25 percent, the insurance industry at 5 percent, and the bill sector at 4.88 percent, data showed.
BUDGET NEEDS
The ministry said in June that it intended to sell a total of NT$120 billion in treasury bonds in the third quarter of the year to help repay the government’s debt and meet general and special budget needs aimed at boosting economic recovery.
The government issued NT$40 billion in five-year bonds at a yield of 1.011 percent on July 20 and NT$40 billion in 20-year bonds at a yield of 1.789 on Aug. 12, the central bank’s statistics showed.
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