Asian currencies posted their best week against the US dollar this year on optimism stimulus spending plans will avoid a deeper global recession, reviving investor demand for emerging-market assets.
The New Taiwan dollar, South Korea’s won and India’s rupee rallied this week after central banks in the US, Japan and the UK announced plans to buy bonds, increasing the supply of US dollars, yen and pounds.
The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index of regional stocks completed its biggest weekly advance since August 2007 and the cost to protect Asian debt outside Japan declined.
“There’s optimism surrounding the stimulus measures; concerns about recession are easing,” said D. Sivadass, a currency forwards trader at EON Bank Bhd in Kuala Lumpur. “Regional currencies are mostly benefiting from the dollar-weakness trend.”
The NT dollar strengthened 2.1 percent this week to NT$33.800, while the rupee climbed as much as 2.9 percent to 50.03 before trimming gains.
The won gained 5 percent to 1,412.50 per dollar, according to Seoul Money Brokerage Services Ltd.
Malaysia’s ringgit rose 1.7 percent to 3.6445.
The four currencies and Singapore’s dollar logged their biggest weekly gains since the five days ended Dec. 19.
All of Asia’s 10 most-traded currencies appreciated as the ICE’s Dollar Index, which tracks the US dollar versus the euro, yen, pound, Swiss franc, Canadian dollar and Swedish krona, fell to the lowest in more than two months on Thursday.
“The Fed’s move to buy bonds is going to keep US interest rates low on a sustained basis,” said Krishnamurthy Harihar, head of treasury at Development Credit Bank Ltd in Mumbai. “The rupee is gaining from the widening India-US rate differential, which has triggered broad dollar declines.”
Elsewhere, the Philippine peso advanced 0.5 percent from a week ago to 48.315 a dollar and Singapore’s dollar rose 1.8 percent to S$1.5132. Indonesia’s rupiah jumped 1.8 percent to 11,775 and China’s yuan gained 0.2 percent, the most in more than two months, to 6.8277.
The US dollar rebounded on Friday as markets weighed plans announced by the US Federal Reserve this week to buy up to US$300 billion in bonds.
In just two days following the announcement, the US dollar had fallen 5 percent versus the euro, 3 percent against the pound and 4 percent versus the yen.
But on Friday, the buck regained some steam. The 16-nation euro dropped to US$1.3551 in late New York trading from US$1.3662 on Thursday, while the pound fell to US$1.4439 from US$1.4511. The dollar climbed to ¥95.96 from ¥94.53.
In other late trading on Friday, the dollar rose to SF1.1296 from SF1.1248, and inched up to C$1.2395 from C$1.2382.
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
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘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
RSS