South Korea’s won slumped to a four-year low on speculation that intervention won’t halt the currency’s slide.
The Philippine peso fell this week after the government lowered its economic growth forecast. The NT dollar declined 0.1 percent to NT$31.370.
The won dropped as much as 0.8 percent yesterday to 1,063 against the US dollar, the weakest since December 2004, as refiners bought the US currency to import oil and overseas investors sold local stocks.
The won had rallied 0.6 percent before the slide on purchases by the central bank, said Sam Hong, a Seoul-based currency trader at Shinhan Bank, a unit of South Korea’s second-biggest financial group.
“The government’s action is not strong enough to stop the won’s slide,” said Lee Yoon-jin, a currency dealer at state-run Korea Development Bank in Seoul. “There have been a lot of purchases of the dollar from the local energy companies.”
The won slid 0.7 percent to 1,062.5 per dollar yesterday in Seoul, after touching a high of 1,048, Seoul Money Brokerage Services Ltd said.
It dropped 4.7 percent this month, the biggest decline among Asia’s 10 most-active currencies, excluding the yen.
The peso fell 0.2 percent to 45.65 per dollar in Manila yesterday, the Bankers Association of the Philippines said, extending the currency’s losses this week to 0.3 percent.
The peso fell for a fourth week and reached the lowest level in more than a month on concern that demand for the nation’s exports from its biggest market in the US will decrease.
The Indonesian rupiah snapped a two-week decline on speculation overseas investors are buying the nation’s assets as stocks rise and the government issues Islamic bonds.
The currency completed its best week in more than a month on speculation the central bank is seeking a stronger currency to help temper inflation.
Foreign investors bought more Indonesian stocks than they sold in two of the three trading days until Thursday.
The currency rose 0.3 percent to 9,140 yesterday in Jakarta.
Singapore’s dollar had its best week in two months as the US dollar weakened against the euro and the yen, which are part of the trade-weighted basket managed by the Southeast Asian nation’s central bank.
The Singapore dollar rose 0.6 percent this week.
Elsewhere, the Malaysian ringgit advanced 0.2 percent to 3.3400 a dollar from 3.3480 last week, while the Thai baht fell 0.3 percent to 33.93 and Vietnam’s dong was at 16,595 per dollar.
Authorities have detained three former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC, 台積電) employees on suspicion of compromising classified technology used in making 2-nanometer chips, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Prosecutors are holding a former TSMC engineer surnamed Chen (陳) and two recently sacked TSMC engineers, including one person surnamed Wu (吳) in detention with restricted communication, following an investigation launched on July 25, a statement said. The announcement came a day after Nikkei Asia reported on the technology theft in an exclusive story, saying TSMC had fired two workers for contravening data rules on advanced chipmaking technology. Two-nanometer wafers are the most
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
A bipartisan group of US representatives have introduced a draft US-Taiwan Defense Innovation Partnership bill, aimed at accelerating defense technology collaboration between Taiwan and the US in response to ongoing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The bill was introduced by US representatives Zach Nunn and Jill Tokuda, with US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar and US Representative Ashley Hinson joining as original cosponsors, a news release issued by Tokuda’s office on Thursday said. The draft bill “directs the US Department of Defense to work directly with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense through their respective
Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands. “The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled. Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA
RSS