Asian currencies rallied on Friday, paring this week’s losses, after Greece scrapped plans for a referendum that put its bailout in jeopardy, fueling investor appetite for emerging-market assets.
South Korea’s won led the advance, rising 1.7 percent to 1,110.70 against the US dollar, after the European Central Bank (ECB) cut borrowing costs, boosting demand for higher-yielding securities. Interest rates in the region are as high as 8.5 percent in India and 6.5 percent in Indonesia, compared with the ECB’s 1.25 percent and as low as zero in the US.
The New Taiwan dollar rose 0.7 percent to NT$30.025 per US dollar on Friday, paring its five-day drop to 0.5 percent. Right after the foreign-exchange market opened on Friday, NT dollar buying by foreign banks and exporters turned strong, helping the local currency partly recoup losses seen in the previous few sessions, dealers said.
A strong equity rebound added downward pressure on the US dollar as foreign institutional investors resumed buying to pick up large-cap stocks, in particular financial heavyweights, they said.
Thailand’s baht rose 0.4 percent to 30.66 per US dollar and slid 0.4 percent from a week ago.
The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index of regional equities rallied 2.4 percent, halting a four-day decline. Funds investing in emerging-market stocks attracted US$3.5 billion in inflows in the week ended Wednesday, the biggest amount since early April, Citigroup analyst Markus Rosgen said in a report on Friday, citing figures compiled by EPFR Global.
Benchmark 10-year government bonds in South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines offer yields of 3.84 percent, 6.32 percent and 5.77 percent respectively, Bloomberg data show. US Treasuries yield 2.03 percent, while German bunds, seen as the European benchmark, are 1.82 percent.
The yuan advanced 0.19 percent on Friday to 6.3392 per US dollar in Shanghai, contributing to a weekly advance of 0.3 percent, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. The People’s Bank of China raised its daily fixing by 0.05 percent to 6.3165, the highest level since July 2005.
The Philippine peso climbed 0.5 percent to 42.91 per US dollar and Indonesia’s rupiah rose 0.2 percent to 8,950 against the US dollar. The two currencies dropped 0.7 percent and 1.8 percent this week respectively. India’s rupee advanced 0.1 percent on Friday to 49.1113 per US dollar and fell 0.7 percent this week.
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],”
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
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