The New Taiwan dollar yesterday rose to a fresh 13-and-a-half-year high against the US dollar as foreign buying of local shares boosted demand for the local currency.
The NT dollar closed up NT$0.099 at NT$28.926 against the greenback on the Taipei Forex market yesterday.
At the smaller Cosmos Foreign Exchange -market, it ended even higher at NT$28.867.
This marked the second time that the NT dollar hit a 13-and-a-half-year high this month. The local currency closed at NT$28.991 on April 8, its strongest level since it ended at NT$28.518 on Oct. 16, 1997.
“The strong performance of the stock market helped drive up the NT dollar,” a Taipei-based currency trader at the Bank of Taiwan (臺灣銀行) said by telephone.
The TAIEX rose 144.37 points, or 1.63 percent, to close at 8,957.65 points yesterday, led by the financial sector’s 3.86 percent rally, while electronics lagged with a 0.81 percent rise, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Net buying by overseas fund managers and Chinese investors reached NT$20.38 billion (US$706.12 million), a sharp rise from Wednesday’s NT$7.34 billion, according to statistics posted on the Web site of the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Foreign fund inflows also boosted trading volume on the currency market to about US$1.7 billion yesterday, with US$1.15 billion on the Taipei Forex exchange and US$557 million on the Cosmos market, the trader said.
The NT dollar rose in line with other currencies in the region, the dealer said.
The Chinese yuan rose from Wednesday’s 6.5255 to 6.5205 against the greenback, its strongest level since Beijing’s reform of the yuan’s exchange rate.
Chen Miao (陳淼), director of the macroeconomic forecasting center at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院), predicted that the NT dollar would remain strong in light of rising uncertainties about the US economy.
“Standard & Poor’s warning that the US could lose its ‘AAA’ rating drove up uncertainties about a US economic recovery and further extended the US dollar’s weak performance relative to Asian main currencies, including the NT dollar,” Chen told the Taipei Times.
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