Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves last month gained US$1.13 billion from the previous month to US$577.98 billion, backed by higher interest income, which offset capital outflows, the central bank said yesterday.
November is the high season for the central bank to collect interest income on its bond holdings, Department of Foreign Exchange Deputy Director-General Ho Lan-chih (賀蘭芝) told a media briefing in Taipei.
“The currency market is quite stable and the central bank rarely stepped in to maintain market order and stability,” Ho said.
Photo: REUTERS
However, foreign portfolio managers trimmed their positions in local equities and bonds amid anxiety over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threat, which could weigh on Taiwan’s electronics exports, she said.
The global capital movements also had to do with Trump’s pledge to “make America great again” through tax cuts and protectionist trade measures, which lent support to the US dollar against almost all other major currencies, Ho said.
Last month, the euro fell 2.27 percent, the British pound declined 2.28 percent, the Chinese yuan shrank 1.37 percent and the New Taiwan dollar depreciated 1.51 percent against the US dollar, she said, adding that the yen managed to buck the trend with a 2.14 percent increase.
Financial markets are now looking at a potential interest rate cut by the US Federal Reserve later this month after the latest data showed the US economy was relatively resilient, but appeared to be wanting in strength, Ho said.
The US dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of major currencies, picked up 1.69 percent last month, Ho said.
The movement of the greenback would continue to dominate the NT dollar’s direction even though the brief martial law declaration in South Korea helped boost the local currency this week, she said.
Taiwan last month replaced India as the world’s fourth-largest holder of foreign exchange reserves after China, Japan and Switzerland, central bank data showed.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS