Asian currencies posted their biggest weekly decline in a month, led by India’s rupee, as weaker-than-forecast US economic data and Europe’s debt crisis damped demand for riskier assets.
More Americans filed claims for jobless benefits in the week ended April 14 and sales of previously owned homes unexpectedly dropped last month, reports showed this week. Spanish bond yields rose to a four-month high at an auction of 10-year securities on Thursday. The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index of stocks dropped 0.8 percent for the week.
“Lingering concerns about the European debt crisis and a slowing US recovery are making it a bit hard to add risk positions,” said Kozo Hasegawa, a Bangkok-based trader at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.
The rupee slid 1.5 percent this week to 52.0850 per US dollar on Friday in Mumbai, the biggest drop since the five days ended March 23, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Indonesia’s rupiah fell 0.5 percent to 9,183, and Malaysia’s ringgit slid 0.4 percent to 3.0643.
The New Taiwan dollar bucked the trend by advancing for a second week as the government vowed to contain inflation. The overnight interbank lending rate reached a three-year high.
“The central bank is quite determined to control inflation,” said Tarsicio Tong (湯健揚), a currency trader at Union Bank of Taiwan (聯邦銀行) in Taipei. “It’s allowing rises in the overnight rate to drain excess cash from the system.”
The NT dollar advanced 0.02 percent this week, according to Taipei Forex Inc, while the overnight money-market rose 0.6 basis points to 0.491 percent this week, according to a weighted average compiled by the Taiwan Interbank Money Center. It reached 0.493 percent on Friday, the highest level since December 2008.
China’s yuan declined 0.09 percent this week to 6.3085 per US dollar after the nation widened the currency’s trading band to 1 percent from 0.5 percent from Monday. The band, which is centered on a rate set daily by the central bank, was last broadened in May 2007 from 0.3 percent. The central bank weakened the yuan’s daily reference rate against the greenback on four out of five days this week.
The won posted a second weekly loss, falling 0.4 percent to 1,139.55 won, as a defiant North said it would continue its space program.
“The won is facing downward pressure with North Korea-related risks and concerns about the global economic recovery,” said Han Sung-min, a Seoul-based currency trader at Busan Bank.
Elsewhere, Thailand’s baht weakened 0.6 percent from April 12 to 30.90. Thailand’s onshore financial markets were closed on April 13 and Monday for public holidays. The Philippine peso climbed 0.1 percent to 42.607, while Vietnam’s dong gained 0.4 percent to 20,838.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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