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.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
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