The yuan declined yesterday after a Chinese government report showed exports grew at the slowest pace since February. Overseas sales rose 15.9 percent last month from a year earlier, compared with 17.1 percent in September and the 16.1 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey.
Yuan forwards fell along with other Asian currencies as concern surged that Italy will need to join Greece in seeking a debt bailout.
The currency trimmed its loss in the afternoon as IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said that China was willing to let the yuan appreciate.
“China has to be cautious with European risk getting so huge,” said Leong Sook Mei, regional head of global currency research at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd in Singapore. “The yuan will still appreciate but it’ll be almost a crawl.”
The yuan fell 0.09 percent to close at 6.3459 per US dollar in Shanghai, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. The currency had declined as much as 0.3 percent yesterday. The currency is allowed to trade 0.5 percent either side of the central bank’s daily fixing.
The People’s Bank of China lowered the reference rate by 0.19 percent to 6.3329 per dollar yesterday, the weakest this month.
The yuan slipped 0.09 percent to 6.3720 in offshore trading in Hong Kong.
Internationalization of the yuan could require three five-year periods, Dai Xianglong (戴相龍), chairman of China’s National Council for Social Security Fund, said in Beijing on Wednesday.
There are conditions to push for realization of the full convertibility of the yuan in five to 10 years, Dai said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”