The central bank may allow the New Taiwan dollar to strengthen against the US dollar in the next 12 months to help mitigate imported inflationary pressures after exports showed signs of recovery, Barclays Capital said yesterday.
The British banking group expects the NT dollar to rise to NT$28.5 versus the greenback in the coming 12 months after picking up 3.35 percent so far this year.
“We believe the government will tolerate a stronger NT dollar to lean against imported price pressures, especially when there are signs that the trade surplus will widen in the current quarter on the back of stronger electronics exports,” the foreign brokerage said in a statement.
Barclays attributed the expected improvement in trade surplus to increased exports of handsets and PCs on new product launches such as Apple Inc’s iPhone 5 and HTC Corp’s (宏達電) One series.
Taiwan’s warming ties with China remains the longer-term driver of NT dollar appreciation, in view of more foreign direct investment flows into Taiwan and the rising potential of yuan-based businesses, Barclays said.
In addition, the boom in tourist arrivals from China has generated a sense of optimism in the real-estate market, the brokerage said.
Chinese visitor arrivals in the first nine months of the year grew 54 percent year-on-year, boosting Chinese arrivals from 1.8 million last year to 2.7 million this year, with the figure likely to hit 4.5 million by 2014, Barclays said.
“As such, foreign exchange earnings from Chinese tourists could hit US$8 billion (NT$234.44 billion) by 2014, from US$4.5 billion last year,” increasing the services-account surplus of the balance of payments after years of deficits, it said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to