Asian currencies rose, with India’s rupee posting its best week in more than a decade, as global investors piled into emerging-market equities and the dollar slumped on concern the US will lose its top credit rating.
The Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index, which tracks the 10 most-active regional currencies against the greenback, climbed to the highest level in more than four months on Friday.
The rupee rose 4.9 percent this week to 47.125 per dollar in Mumbai, its biggest weekly advance since March 1996, after a resounding election victory by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress Party boosted optimism he will see through reforms unopposed that are beneficial to the economy. India’s SENSEX index of stocks rallied 14 percent, the biggest weekly gain since 1992.
TAIWAN DOLLAR
The New Taiwan dollar completed a fifth weekly gain as the country took further measures to boost relations and trade with China, helping draw funds to Taiwanese assets.
“Taiwan is a capital goods and technology exporter to China and will get some support that way,” said Patrick Bennett, a Hong Kong-based currency strategist at Societe Generale SA. “This expansion of economic cooperation between Taiwan and China is something new and very positive. It’ll be a long-term positive for portfolio flows.”
The NT dollar rose 0.8 percent this week to NT$32.679 and reached a five-month high of NT$32.585 on Friday.
The South Korean won gained a similar proportion to 1,247.67. The Asia Dollar Index climbed for a fifth day to close at the highest level since October.
Elsewhere, the Malaysian ringgit rose 2.3 percent this week to 3.4705 per US dollar, near a four-month high. Singapore’s dollar added 1.8 percent to S$1.4412 and the Indonesian rupiah climbed 1.9 percent to 10,239.
US DOLLAR
The US dollar dropped this week against all 16 of the world’s most-traded currencies. The yen climbed to a nine-week high against the greenback on Friday.
The US dollar slid 0.8 percent to US$1.3998 per euro at 4:16pm on Friday in New York, from US$1.3890 on Thursday, after reaching US$1.4051, the weakest level since Jan. 2. The yen declined 0.4 percent to ¥94.80 per dollar from ¥94.41, after touching ¥93.86, the strongest level since March 19. The yen lost 1.2 percent to ¥132.71 versus the euro from ¥131.15.
The Canadian dollar advanced as much as 1.6 percent on Friday to C$1.1189, the strongest since Oct. 9, while New Zealand’s currency climbed to US$0.6238, the highest level since Oct. 21. The Australian dollar reached US$0.7867, the highest level since Oct. 2.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
RSS