Asian stocks rose for the first time in five weeks as Japan and China signaled more measures to buttress their economies from the deepening global recession.
PetroChina Co, the nation’s largest oil producer, climbed 12 percent in Hong Kong after crude oil surged and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said China could boost spending plans any time. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, Japan’s biggest bank, gained 4.5 percent in Tokyo after Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso ordered more economic stimulus measures. Commonwealth Bank of Australia jumped 12 percent, pacing gains among financial companies, as three US banks said earnings were improving.
“Markets can take comfort that countries with the ability to do so are providing fiscal stimulus, rather than waiting till it’s too difficult to fight the momentum,” said Tim Schroeders, who helps manage about US$2.6 billion at Pengana Capital Ltd in Melbourne. “We’re seeing some money parked in safe havens returning to the market.”
The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index rose 3.9 percent to 74.72 this week, snapping a four-week, 14 percent decline. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average climbed 5.5 percent to 7,569.28, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 5.1 percent.
Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd, the world’s third-biggest maker of customized chips, plunged 48 percent after announcing a US$300 million rights offering. Elpida Memory Inc, Japan’s biggest memory-chip maker, slumped 23 percent after a merger with Taiwanese rivals failed to materialize.
Taiwanese share prices are expected to extend gains next week as more foreign institutional investors return, dealers said.
A stronger New Taiwan dollar against the greenback is likely to prompt foreign investors to buy, they said.
Electronic stocks may continue momentum as investors have embraced high hopes that profitability will improve. The financial sector is also likely to gain.
For the week to Friday, the market rose 243.76 points or 5.24 percent to 4,897.39. Average daily turnover stood at NT$97.19 billion (US$2.82 billion), compared with NT$84.39 billion a week ago.
Since the beginning of last month, the bourse has gained almost 15 percent.
Mega Securities (兆豐證券) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said investors should watch how General Motors resolves its financial difficulties.
“If negative news emerges related to GM, Wall Street may pull back and hurt its foreign counterparts, including Taiwan,” Huang said.
Other markets on Friday:
KUALA LUMPUR: Up 0.6 percent. The Kuala Lumpur Composite Index rose 5.06 points to 843.45.
JAKARTA: Up 1.3 percent. The Jakarta Composite Index rose 17.02 points to 1,327.43.
MANILA: Down 1.2 percent. The composite index lost 23.57 points to 1,856.10.
WELLINGTON: Up 1.28 percent. The benchmark NZX-50 index rose 31.77 points to 2,523.39.
MUMBAI: Up 4.95 percent. The SENSEX rose 412.86 points to 8,756.61. The 30-share index achieved its second straight day of gains on Wall Street’s positive performance.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has