China’s yuan forwards rose for a fourth day as the central bank set the currency’s reference rate at the strongest level since 2005 before a meeting of finance ministers from G20 nations.
The People’s Bank of China set the daily fixing 0.08 percent stronger at 6.5800 per dollar after the US Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against the currencies of six major trading partners, dropped in the past two days.
China may come under pressure at the G20 in Paris today and tomorrow over its exchange rate, as it’s seen as promoting an imbalance in reserves, a German government official said on Wednesday.
The daily fixing “partly reflects the dollar’s weakness overnight, but is also an attempt to placate foreign critics ahead of the G20 meeting,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. “We expect continued gains later in the week.”
Twelve-month non-deliverable forwards gained 0.05 percent to 6.4245 as of 5:17pm in Hong Kong, reflecting bets the currency will appreciate 2.5 percent in a year from the spot rate. The yuan rose 0.02 percent to 6.5871 per dollar, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. It earlier reached 6.5800, the strongest level since China unified official and market exchange rates at the end of 1993.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said China’s inflation rate means that the yuan was -effectively appreciating against the dollar at a rate of “roughly 10 percent a year or more,” in a Senate Finance Committee testimony on Wednesday. He added the Asian nation needs to let the currency keep rising to manage its own economy.
“The comment provides Beijing with a powerful argument to counter accusations of substantial undervaluation of its currency and lowers risks of a trade war,” Kowalczyk said.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce yesterday said foreign direct investment rose 23.4 percent last month to US$10 billion from a year earlier, adding to record inflows last year that are exacerbating Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s (溫家寶) challenge of taming overheating risks.
Consumer prices increased 4.9 percent last month from a year earlier, faster than 4.6 percent the previous month, according to official figures on Tuesday.
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],”
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
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