The dollar topped ¥100 for the first time in five months but weakened against other major currencies on Friday as traders assessed the impact of a weak US employment on economic recovery prospects.
At 9pm GMT, the euro fetched US$1.3483 from US$1.3461 late on Thursday in New York.
The dollar meanwhile rose to ¥100.29 from ¥99.52 as investors welcomed the G20 summit pledge to step up efforts to tackle the economic crisis.
“The actions by Washington and leaders of the 20 largest economies have helped to restore risk appetite,” Kathy Lien at Global Forex Trading said.
In late New York trading, the dollar stood at 1.1301 Swiss francs from SF1.1340 on Thursday.
The pound was at US$1.4836 after US$1.4725.
Asian currencies rose for a fifth week, the longest winning streak since October 2007 in the wake of the G20 summit.
Eight of the 10 most active Asian currencies outside Japan advanced in the week after economic reports in China, the US and the UK fueled speculation that demand for regional exports will strengthen.
The Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index, which tracks their performance, touched a two-month high on Thursday.
The South Korean won advanced 0.6 percent this week to 1,341.50 per dollar, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The New Taiwan dollar climbed 1.2 percent to NT$33.38 and the Malaysian ringgit strengthened 1 percent to 3.5803.
The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index of regional equities climbed 1.4 percent during the week.
The NT dollar touched an 11-week high on Thursday before paring its advance on reported intervention. The central bank bought at least US$1.2 billion of US dollars on Thursday to counter foreign investors’ and local corporations’ purchases of the Taiwanese currency, the Taipei-based Economic Daily News said on Friday.
Elsewhere, the Singapore dollar climbed 0.6 percent this week to S$1.5051, Indonesia’s rupiah rose 0.2 percent to 11,475 and the Philippine peso gained 0.4 percent to 47.862.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
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