China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange estimated US$35.5 billion of so-called “hot money” flowed into Asia’s largest economy last year, 42 percent more than the average in the past decade.
The figure accounted for 7.6 percent of the accumulation in foreign-exchange reserves, the currency regulator said in a report published on its Web site yesterday. The average annual net inflow of hot money, or short-term speculative capital, was about US$25 billion in the last 10 years, the administration said.
“This suggests that the hot money issue is not a major problem for managing the currency, nor a key source of asset price bubble threat,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, a senior economist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. “This may reduce worries that rate hikes will attract more such flows, allowing the central bank to continue the relatively fast pace of hikes.”
The People’s Bank of China has raised major lenders’ -reserve-requirement ratios seven times since the start of last year to help drain funds from the financial system. The bank boosted borrowing costs last week for the third time in four months to help damp inflation. It has permitted the yuan to strengthen 3.6 percent since a two-year dollar peg was scrapped on June 19.
China’s foreign-exchange reserves, the world’s largest, increased by a record US$199 billion in the fourth quarter to US$2.85 trillion, the bank said on Jan. 11.
The administration pledged to monitor cross-border capital flows and expand outflow channels, in a statement accompanying the report.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the