The French government wants all retail outlets other than restaurants and bars to be able to reopen once a nationwide lockdown is lifted on May 11, French Minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire said yesterday.
The government has said that not all businesses would be able to go back to work immediately once the lockdown, in place since the middle of last month to rein in the COVID-19 outbreak, ends.
“We want all retailers to be able to open on May 11 in the same way out of fairness,” Le Maire told France Info radio, adding that it remained to be seen whether that would be possible nationwide or only region by region.
“I would only set aside restaurants, bars and cafes,” he said.
The retail sector is among the hardest hit by the government-imposed closure of non-essential activities.
The lockdown is still cutting economic activity by 35 percent more than a month since it was imposed, despite a slight pick-up in the industrial and construction sectors, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) said.
Setting those two sectors aside, the INSEE estimate suggests that activity has yet to regain any momentum.
In the private sector and excluding rents, the loss of activity was as much as half of what it would be at normal levels, it said.
With the recovery likely to be gradual after the lockdown is lifted, the INSEE said that the impact was likely to be bigger than its previous estimate that each month of lockdown would reduce GDP by 3 percentage points.
The government has forecast that the eurozone’s second-biggest economy would contract 8 percent this year, which would be its worst recession since World War II.
Activity had picked up in the industrial and construction sectors after health protocols had been put in place allowing some factories and construction sites to resume work, INSEE said.
Separately, INSEE’s monthly survey showed that business confidence fell this month to the lowest level since records began in 1980, falling to 62 points from 94 last month.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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