Asian currencies climbed this week, led by South Korea’s won and Malaysia’s ringgit, on speculation the US Federal Reserve will raise US interest rates at a slower pace than market participants had envisaged.
There will not be a “smooth upward path” for rates, though a tightening will probably be warranted before year-end, US Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said on March 23.
The monetary authority last week dropped an assurance to be “patient” on the timing of its first increase since 2006. Brent recorded its biggest five-day gain in six weeks as Saudi Arabia’s bombing of rebel targets in Yemen, which is near the center of global energy trade, raised concern supplies will be disrupted.
“The market is still thinking about the step back in hawkishness we saw from the Fed last week,” Hong Kong-based Rabobank Group head of financial markets research Michael Every said. “We’ve got instability in the Middle East, so oil prices go back up again and naturally, that helps oil-linked currencies like the ringgit.”
The won gained 1.8 percent in the past five days versus the US dollar, its biggest weekly advance since August last year. The ringgit strengthened 1.3 percent as crude’s advance allayed concern about a drop in revenue for Malaysia, the only net oil exporter among Asia’s major economies. Indonesia’s rupiah climbed 0.4 percent.
The New Taiwan dollar had its biggest weekly gain in two months on speculation faster economic growth and a weaker greenback would attract inflows.
The NT dollar strengthened 0.6 percent from March 20 and 0.1 percent on Friday to NT$31.375 against the greenback, Taipei Forex Inc prices show. That is the biggest weekly advance since the period ending Jan. 24.
The yuan declined 0.2 percent this week as data added to evidence of a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy. A preliminary gauge of manufacturing fell to an 11-month low this month, a private report showed, and economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict an official Purchasing Managers’ Index due on April 1 will be the lowest since August 2012.
Elsewhere in Asia, the Philippine peso advanced 0.1 percent this week, while Thailand’s baht declined 0.1 percent and India’s rupee retreated 0.2 percent.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day