The offshore yuan climbed to a three-week high after China’s central bank strengthened its daily fixing by the most in a month following a retreat in the US dollar.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) raised the yuan’s reference rate by 0.1 percent to 6.1233 versus the greenback. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, which tracks the currency against 10 major peers, dropped 0.6 percent on Friday, as data showed US hourly earnings fell last month by the most since 2006. China’s exports rose 6 percent last month, compared with 4.7 percent in November last year, according to a Bloomberg survey before data due today.
“After the non-farm payroll data, there was an adjustment in the US dollar,” Bank of East Asia Ltd currency analyst Kenix Lai (賴春梅) said in Hong Kong. “An expected improvement [today] in exports should also continue to support the yuan.”
The offshore yuan advanced 0.04 percent to 6.2030 per dollar as of 4:51pm in Hong Kong, data compiled by Bloomberg show. It earlier rose to 6.1958, the strongest level since Dec. 17 last year. The yuan in Shanghai gained 0.08 percent to close at 6.2036, 1.3 percent weaker than before the fixing and within the 2 percent daily limit, China Foreign Exchange Trade System prices show. Twelve-month non-deliverable forwards climbed 0.08 percent to 6.3075, 1.6 percent lower than the onshore spot rate.
The PBOC will take measures including buying or selling foreign exchange when the rate moves out of a range that is considered an “appropriate and equilibrium level,” Caixin magazine reported, citing central bank researcher Wang Yu (王宇). The monetary authority will maintain a “prudent” monetary policy and ensure sufficient liquidity in the banking system, it said in a statement on Friday.
The nation’s foreign-exchange reserves will probably drop to between US$3.5 trillion and US$4 trillion by the end of this year, according to 50 percent of 18 economists surveyed by Bloomberg from Wednesday to Thursday last week. The stockpile, the world’s largest, was US$3.89 trillion at the end of September last year, down US$105.5 billion from the end of June last year.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained