Demand for Thailand's 10 baht coins has rocketed following reports that these can be used in vending machines in Europe that accept the new euro currency.
The Thai coin is reportedly almost identical to the 2 euro coin in weight and size, but it is worth about one-seventh its European look-alike. Ten baht is worth roughly 0.26 euros (just over US$0.20).
Staff at currency exchange booths at Bangkok's international airport said Saturday that the sudden upsurge of demand for the 10 baht coin started about three weeks ago.
PHOTO: AP
"Dozens of tourists, mostly Westerners, specifically asked for 10 baht coins. Some of them wanted as many as 50 coins," said Anucha Krut-hern, staffing the Thai Military Bank booth at the airport's departure terminal.
Anucha said she was initially surprised because he figured most travelers would not want to carry heavy coins with low value out of the country. The answer he got from some he queried was that they were "just a souvenir."
Currency exchange staff of the Bangkok Bank and Krung Thai Bank, who asked not to be named, told the same story.
The tellers said their banks later issued orders not to dispense large amounts of the coins to tourists since they might be misused in European vending machines which reportedly cannot differentiate between the 10 baht and 2 euro coins.
The Bangkok Post Saturday quoted an official of the Treasury Department as saying that 559 million 10-baht coins were currently in circulation and the department had no plans to take action.
"The fact that our 10 baht coin is similar to the 2 euro coin is the problem of the European Union, not Thailand," Thevan Vichitakul, deputy chief of the department, told the daily newspaper.
Both coins weigh the same but the Thai coin is slightly larger. The metallic contents of the two coins are different. A EU official in Bangkok said the European Central Bank was aware of the problem. But Thailand had not been blamed for the confusion or asked to withdraw its coins.
"There are so many coins in circulation from different countries, that it's impossible for them all to be completely different," the European Commission spokesman said.
"If vending machine operators find foreign coins in their machines, it's up to them to change their software," he said.The euro made its debut as the official EU currency Jan. 1.
In the meantime, European tourists returning home are stocking up on the Thai coins where they can. One German tourist, finishing some beers before heading for the airport Friday night, asked for change in the 10 baht coins "just to see if they worked."
The Catalan daily, El Periodico, reported last week that the owner of a bar in northern Spain had found five 10 baht coins recently when he emptied his automatic cigarette machine.
"How could the European Union have made such a mistake?" asked Alegandro Diaz, the manager of the bar in Mollet.
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控) yesterday launched its second testing facility in San Jose, California, to expand advanced chip testing capacity such as burn-in testing to satisfy customers’ rising engineering needs for emerging semiconductor applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). ISE Labs Inc, a fully owned subsidiary of ASE, would operate the advanced testing facility. When added to its first facility in nearby Fremont, ISE would double its available research-and-development lab and business space to 150,000m2 in hopes of boosting the US semiconductor supply chain, the company said in a statement. “As the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain reshoring
VALUE: TSMC’s market capitalization far exceeds the combined size of all the Latin American companies on MSCI Inc’s benchmark for emerging markets Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) US$420 billion equity rally this year would get a valuation test this week when it reports earnings, with analysts expecting the chipmaker to raise full-year sales forecasts. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker would probably report a 29 percent increase in second-quarter net income on Thursday, according to the median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. More importantly, analysts from JPMorgan Chase & Co to Morgan Stanley expect it to also raise its full-year sales guidance, justifying another round of valuation expansion. Just like Nvidia Corp, TSMC has become a favorite artificial intelligence (AI)-bet for investors with
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: The previous shooting targeting a US president or major party candidate was the 1981 incident targeting then-US president Ronald Reagan Saturday’s shooting at former US president Donald Trump’s election rally raises his odds of winning back the White House, and trades betting on his victory would increase this coming week, investors said yesterday. Trump was shot in the ear during the rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday in what the authorities were treating as an assassination attempt. Trump, his face spattered with blood, pumped his fist moments after the attack, and his campaign said he was fine after the incident. Before the shooting, markets had reacted to the prospect of a Trump presidency by pushing the US dollar higher and positioning for a
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday thanked memory chipmaker Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra for his trust and continued investment in Taiwan, in a rare public meeting with a senior foreign tech executive. It is very unusual for Taiwan’s president to have publicized meetings with senior foreign tech executives, despite the nation being home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), whose chips help to power the surge in artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Lai thanked Mehrotra for “showing trust and support for Taiwan” in a video released by the Presidential Office. “I want to thank Micron for its long-term