Asian currencies retreated from a 15-month high this week as US lawmakers struggled to agree on budget revisions needed to avert US$607 billion of automatic spending cuts and tax increases in the world’s biggest economy.
The Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index, having gained in each of the past six months, halted its advance as Malaysia’s ringgit had its worst week since August.
US President Barack Obama on Wednesday said that the global economy remains “soft” and the deadlock in Washington over taxes and spending, the so-called “fiscal cliff,” is holding the US back from leading a strong recovery. The US Federal Reserve meets next week, when the central bank is forecast to increase its asset purchases.
The ringgit slid 0.6 percent this week to 3.0578 per US dollar in Kuala Lumpur, data compiled by Bloomberg show. China’s yuan was little changed this week at 6.2301 per US dollar, while Thailand’s baht and the New Taiwan dollar were steady at 30.68 and NT$29.125 respectively. South Korea’s won strengthened 0.1 percent to 1,081.55. Indonesia’s rupiah fell 0.7 percent to 9,658, the Philippine peso declined 0.1 percent to 40.933 and India’s rupee fell 0.4 percent to 54.4750.
The Asia Dollar Index, which tracks the region’s 10 most active currencies, excluding the yen, fell 0.1 percent. It reached 118.26 on Nov. 30, the highest since September last year.
Meanwhile, European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi said the eurozone’s economy will shrink 0.5 percent this year this year, while Germany’s central bank slashed its growth estimate for next year to 0.4 percent from 1.6 percent predicted in June.
“Draghi’s words mean the recovery will be slower than previously expected, damping exports to Europe,” said Chong Wee-khoon (張偉勤) of Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong. “More regional central banks are getting a bit more aggressive in intervening in the market to protect the recovery in exports.”
The Central Bank of the Philippine on Monday said capital controls may be part of steps to deal with inflows. South Korea’s market regulators are reviewing more curbs after tightening limits on currency forwards last month, South Korean Financial Services Commission chairman Kim Seok-dong said last week.
The ringgit fell the most since the five days ended on Aug. 31. A Malaysian government report on Friday showed exports shrank 3.2 percent in October from a year earlier, following a 2.6 percent increase in September.
India’s rupee erased gains, after reaching a one-month high of 54.045 per US dollar on Thursday. Indian lawmakers this week voted in favor of a government decision to open the retailing sector to the likes of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
In Europe, the euro fell against the US dollar and yen for the first time in four weeks, seeing its biggest one-day decline in a month on Thursday as the ECB joined the Bundesbank in scaling back growth projections.
The US dollar weakened against higher-yielding currencies after the nation’s employment rate unexpectedly fell to an almost four-year low. The euro fell 0.5 percent to US$1.2927 in New York for the first weekly loss since Nov. 9. It touched US$1.2877 on Friday, the weakest since Nov. 23. The euro declined 0.4 percent to ¥106.67, reaching ¥106.12 on Friday, the lowest in more than a week. The yen was little changed versus the US dollar at ¥82.49.
The euro has lost 2.5 percent this year, the second-worst performer among the 10 developed-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Indexes. The yen slid 9.5 percent and the US dollar fell 2.2 percent.
The Dollar Index, which IntercontinentalExchange Inc uses to track the greenback against currencies of six US trading partners, rose 0.3 percent to 80.412, for its first gain in three weeks.
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