Japanese Minister of Finance Taro Aso said that one-sided speculative movements in the US dollar-yen rate are “extremely concerning,” the Nikkei newspaper reported yesterday.
Japan will carefully watch currency markets to ensure speculation does not continue and will take action as might be necessary, Aso told reporters at Haneda Airport late on Saturday.
The yen surged against the US dollar to ¥106.5 on Friday for an 18-month high after the Bank of Japan did not deliver further monetary easing as markets had expected. The yen has climbed about 12 percent this year against the US dollar.
Photo: AP
Aso’s comments came as the US is stepping up rhetoric on foreign-exchange practices with a semi-annual US Treasury report saying Japan is among countries that have been put on a watch list.
Aso said Friday’s report in no way constrains Japan’s ability to respond should any action be needed, according to the Nikkei report.
The US also put Taiwan, China, Germany and South Korea on the list, saying it will monitor policies to gauge whether they provide an unfair trade advantage over the US.
The five countries have met two of three criteria used to judge practices. If a country meets all three criteria, it could eventually be cut off from some US development financing and excluded from US government contracts.
Taiwan made the list because of its current-account surplus and persistent intervention to weaken the currency, according to the department.
China, Japan, Germany and South Korea were flagged as a result of their trade and current-account surpluses, the US Department of the Treasury said.
The report said that Japan has not intervened in the foreign exchange market in more than four years.
The US Treasury said it is increasingly important that Japan use all policy levers, including fiscal policy and structural reforms, to lift growth.
Last month, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew urged Japan to focus on boosting domestic demand instead of exports as the yen rises.
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],”
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
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