The nation’s balance of payments last quarter reported a drop of US$4.12 billion in reserve assets, the first retreat since Europe’s debt woes in 2011, as the central bank poured money into the foreign exchange market to slow the local currency’s depreciation.
Other Asian central banks made the same move and incurred even heavier losses, the central bank said, adding that peers in South Korea, Japan and Singapore also intervened in response to massive capital outflows from Asia to take refuge in the US dollar.
The balance of payments sum up all transactions made with foreign entities by individuals, companies and government bodies in an economy. The figure is commonly used as a reference for monetary policymaking.
Photo: CNA
The central bank said it had no choice but to act to keep the New Taiwan dollar relatively stable, adding that Japan saw its reserve assets from July to September tumble by US$14.4 billion.
It is common for global portfolio managers to send capital and cash dividends abroad, and stay on the sidelines during a financial tumult, the central bank said.
Taiwan’s economy has fared well thus far, although global monetary tightening has cooled demand for consumer discretionary spending, the central bank said.
The current account booked a surplus of US$20.71 billion as global demand for Taiwan-made chips remained strong, even though the surplus shrank by US$6.14 billion from a year earlier due to inventory correction, it said.
Faster imports induced by energy and raw material price gains also weighed on the current account, the central bank added.
The service account posted a surplus of US$3.75 billion, widening by US$500 million from a year earlier, as Taiwan eased COVID-19 restrictions, the central bank said.
In the first three quarters, Taiwan accumulated a current account surplus of US$75.03 billion, while its reserve assets decreased by US$50 million due to measures to support the local currency.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to