Indonesia’s rupiah forwards fell the most in a week and government bonds declined before the US Federal Reserve was to start a meeting yesterday to decide whether to cut stimulus that has buoyed demand for emerging-market assets.
The US central bank will probably reduce its bond buying to US$75 billion a month from US$85 billion, according to a Bloomberg survey this month. Global funds pulled 2.2 trillion rupiah (US$197 million) from local-currency sovereign notes in the month through Friday, finance ministry data show. Bank Indonesia raised its policy rate by 1.5 percentage points in the past three months to help narrow the current-account deficit, which was a record US$9.8 billion in the second quarter.
“The outlook for the rupiah, as with other emerging-market currencies, is really dependent on how much the Fed is going to do,” Singapore-based Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd foreign-exchange strategist Irene Cheung said. “We still need to see an improvement in the external balance numbers.”
Rupiah one-month non-deliverable forwards slid 1 percent to 11,314 per US dollar as of 4pm in Jakarta, the biggest drop since Sept. 5, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The contracts traded 1.2 percent stronger than the spot rate, which fell 0.6 percent to 11,451, according to prices from local banks. The forwards have traded 3.2 percent weaker on average than the spot rate over the past month.
One-month implied volatility, a measure of expected moves in the exchange rate used to price options, rose four basis points, or 0.04 percentage point, to 17.4 percent, data compiled by Bloomberg show. A fixing used to settle the rupiah forwards was set at 11,224 per US dollar yesterday, compared with 11,101 on Monday, according to the Association of Banks in Singapore.
Indonesia’s US$1.5 billion dollar sukuk sale last week was its last global offering this year, although the government is seeking to raise US$500 million of greenback-denominated notes onshore next month, Robert Pakpahan, director-general at the Indonesian Ministry of Finance’s debt management office, said in Jakarta yesterday.
The yield on the 5.625 percent securities due May 2023 rose 13 basis points to 8.16 percent, the biggest increase since Sept. 4.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
Some robotaxi passengers were left stranded in the middle of fast-moving traffic in a major Chinese city after their driverless vehicles stopped running, according to police and media reports on Wednesday. A preliminary investigation indicates more than 100 robotaxis came to a halt because of a “system malfunction,” police in the city of Wuhan said in a statement, without elaborating. No injuries were reported. One passenger told Chinese media that their robotaxi stopped after turning a corner. An instruction on a screen read: “Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes.” After no one showed up, the passenger pushed
RSS