Taiwan sold 364-day certificates of deposit at a record low yield on speculation banks have surplus cash to invest amid the slowest economic growth in three years.
The government sold NT$150 billion (US$4.7 billion) of the securities at an average of 0.494 percent yesterday, the least in Bloomberg data going back to 2001. That compares with the 0.519 percent at the previous sale on July 3 and the 0.51 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of money-market traders.
Global funds are parking more cash in the money and bond markets after selling equities, said Jerry Lin, a fixed-income trader at First Commercial Bank (第一銀行).
The local bourse’s benchmark TAIEX plummeted 9.1 percent over the past month and the 10-year sovereign bond yield has dropped to a two-year low.
The central bank has refrained from adjusting interest rates since 2011 even after exports contracted for a fifth month.
“There are ample funds and economic data have been poor, so banks are putting money everywhere,” Lin said. “If rates are going to fall further, banks will have even fewer choices of where to invest their funds.”
The nation’s GDP rose 0.64 percent last quarter from a year earlier, missing all 20 estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The central bank might favor a weaker currency to support exports as the New Taiwan dollar has declined 2.4 percent against the US dollar since June 30, after appreciating more than 2 percent in the previous two quarters.
The 10-year bond yield fell one basis point yesterday to 1.42 percent, below the central bank’s 1.875 percent benchmark interest rate. DBS Group Holdings Inc said after the GDP report that the probability of a rate cut is rising. Barclays PLC pushed back its forecast for monetary tightening to June next year from December previously, while Credit Agricole CIB deferred its bet to June from March.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”