Thailand’s baht fell the most in a week on concern overseas investors will keep pulling money from the nation’s assets as anti-government protests that began in late October last year show no sign of abating.
The Bank of Thailand on Wednesday cut this year’s growth forecast to about 3 percent from a prediction in November last year of 4 percent after unexpectedly holding its policy rate at 2.25 percent.
Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Tuesday declared a 60-day state of emergency in Bangkok as she sought to combat violent attacks that threaten to derail elections scheduled for Feb. 2.
Photo: AFP
Global funds pulled a net US$195 million from local bonds and equities this month, official data show.
“We will most likely see continued fund outflows from Thailand and the baht is staying on a downward trend,” said Tsutomu Soma, manager of the fixed-income business unit at Rakuten Securities Inc in Tokyo. “There’s no clear picture of the protests ending or the situation improving, while we don’t even know if the elections can be held as scheduled.”
The baht dropped 0.2 percent, the most since Wednesday last week, to 32.931 per US dollar as of 3:54pm in Bangkok, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The currency has weakened 5.6 percent since the protests began on Oct. 31.
One-month implied volatility, a measure of expected moves in the exchange rate used to price options, fell 2 basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 7.2 percent.
Fourteen of 21 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had expected the central bank to cut its policy rate by 25 basis points, while the rest forecast no change.
Bombings at anti-government rallies and shootings in the capital have killed one person and injured 70 since Friday last week.
Suthep Thaugsuban, a former opposition party lawmaker leading the protests, vowed to continue blockades of major intersections in Bangkok that began on Monday last week.
Thailand last saw a state of emergency to combat protests in 2010, when Suthep’s Democrat Party held power and oversaw a crackdown on protesters loyal to former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck’s brother, which killed more than 90 people.
The central bank expects some impact on the economy from the protests, spokeswoman Roong Mallikamas yesterday said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
Tourist arrivals to Bangkok have fallen 20 percent since Monday last week, the first day of the blockades, from the same period a year earlier, and travel agencies will see more cancellations after a state of emergency was declared, Association of Thai Travel Agents president Sisdivachr Cheewarattanaporn said on Wednesday.
The yield on the 3.125 percent government bonds due December next year rose 1 basis point to 2.43 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured