24/12/2025

BIZ & FINANCE WEDNESDAY | DEC 24, 2025

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BANGKOK: Thailand’s Finance Ministry plans to study a tax on online gold trading and will look at measures to limit gold trading volumes, a senior official said, amid a surge in the baht. The baht has gained 10% against the dollar so far this year to become Asia’s best performing currency. It has now reached its highest level against the dollar in more than four years. Senior ministry official Lavaron Sangsnit said the revenue department would study the imposition of a specific business tax on gold trading conducted via online platforms. It would also look at measures to limit the volume of gold trading, he told a media briefing. The Thai baht’s gains against the US dollar are being driven by “huge” gold trading volumes, with its rise not in line with fundamentals, Central Bank Governor Vitai Ratanakorn told the same briefing. The central bank will manage online gold trading, he said, adding that authorities would manage unusually large gold transactions conducted in baht. Vitai said maximum trading volumes would be established for major gold traders. The central bank said earlier that it had moved to contain the rapid gains in the baht, ordering tighter scrutiny of foreign exchange transactions linked to gold trading. – Reuters Thailand eyes measures on ‘huge’ gold trading volumes He said, “The US is very much hopes to gain access to (Indonesia’s) critical minerals”. Under the framework deal announced in July, Indonesia has also committed to spending billions to increase energy, agriculture, and aircraft imports from US. Officials from both countries will resume discussions next month to iron out legal issues, with presidents Prabowo Subianto and Donald Trump expected to sign the agreement before February. USTR data shows Washington’s goods trade deficit with Indonesia was US$17.9 billion in 2024. – AFP JAKARTA: Indonesia has finalised details of a tariff deal with the United States, a senior minister said, with the leaders of both countries’ expected to sign it next month. Washington in July slashed the tariff faced by Southeast Asia’s largest economy from 32% to 19%, but discussions over the details of the deal have been ongoing since then. Indonesia’s Chief Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto said after a meeting with United States Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer in Washington that both countries had reached an agreement over the details of the deal. “All of the substantive issues that have been regulated in the ART (Agreement on Reciprocal Tariff) document have been agreed by both parties, both the main and technical issues,” Airlangga said in a briefing from Washington on Monday. One of the main points of the talks was to provide “balance” in market access for both parties, he said, adding that Washington provided exemptions to key Indonesian products including palm oil, coffee and tea. Indonesia finalises reciprocal tariff deal with US

The BOJ raised interest rates to 0.75% on Friday, taking them to levels unseen in 30 years in another landmark step in ending decades of huge monetary support. While the move helped narrow the interest rate gap with the US, the yen fell as markets interpreted comments from Ueda’s post-meeting press conference as signaling the BOJ was in no rush to raise rates further. Machida said the yen’s recent weakness reflects both the government’s reflationary fiscal policies and the BOJ’s still-easy monetary policy. With the government preparing an expansionary budget for the next fiscal year, the market needs to see further monetary tightening for a correction in the yen’s weakness, he said. – Reuters narrative, this urgency, is to the benefit of the companies,” he said, referring to the Sino-US tech war. “It’s like yelling fire, right? When you make it an emergency, you get a lot of attention.” KraneShares’ exchange-traded fund dubbed KWEB, which invests in offshore-listed Chinese stocks including Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu, has jumped by two-thirds this year to nearly US$9 billion. Another KraneShares ETF that invests in China’s onshore tech stocks, including chipmakers Cambricon, Montage Technology and Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment, has also grown this year. In the AI race, the US has an edge in innovation while China has advantages in engineering, manufacturing and power supply, said Jason Hsu, founder of US-based Rayliant Global Advisors. Rayliant has partnered with China Asset Management Co in launching a Nasdaq-listed ETF that bets on Chinese stocks with transformative technologies, including Cambricon. US tech curbs have “now forced China to pump money into hard technology and invent from scratch”, said Hsu. “For investors, the prudent and wise strategy is to capture AI opportunities and manage uncertainty through diversification.” AI chipmaker MetaX Integrated Circuits, founded by former AMD executives, jumped 700% in its Shanghai market debut last week, days after larger rival Moore Threads debuted with a 400% pop. However, some global fund managers say China’s tech potential and foreign inflows remain limited. “None of the chip companies that are currently listed have any sort of valuation support and are almost entirely driven by hype,” said Kamil Dimmich, portfolio manager at UK-based North of South Capital. Dimmich’s fund owns stocks such as Alibaba and Baidu, which have both invested much less than US players on AI development. Carol Fong, group CEO of CGS International Securities, said investors should selectively add companies that have benefited from China’s “self-reliance” push in the AI and semiconductor sectors, while keeping global leaders in their portfolio. Investors should “balance exposure in the current fragmented, geopolitics-driven chip cycle”, she said. – Reuters

The building which houses the DeepSeek offices in Beijing. – AFPPIC

Global investors turn to Chinese AI

firms as a wave of startups lists on the mainland and in Hong Kong, seeking to tap into surging investor appetite following the meteoric rise of DeepSeek, China’s answer to ChatGPT. UBS Global Wealth Management this month rated China tech as “most attractive”, citing investors’ search for geographical diversification and China’s “strong policy backing, technological self reliance, and rapid AI monetisation”. The tech-heavy Nasdaq currently trades at 31 times earnings, compared with a multiple of 24 for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Tech, which enables AI bets via stocks including Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and chip foundry SMIC. KraneShares chief investment officer Brendan Ahern said the rapid ascent of Chinese AI chipmakers such as Cambricon speaks to the scale and speed of innovation across China’s AI and semiconductor industries. “The element of this race foreign exchange market in July 2024, buying yen after the currency hit a 38-year low of 161.96 per dollar. “If the dollar climbs past the post-BOJ press conference highs into ¥158 and beyond, the government would conduct intervention at some point for sure,“ said Hiroyuki Machida, director of Japan FX and commodities sales at ANZ. A weak yen has become a source of headache for Japanese policymakers as it pushes up import prices and broader inflation, thereby increasing households’ cost of living. Yesterday’s remarks contrasted with those Katayama made on Monday, when she said Japan will take appropriate action but did not define recent yen moves as out of line with fundamentals.

o Fund managers seek to diversify as fears grow about Wall Street bubble

TOKYO: Japan has a free hand in dealing with excessive moves in the yen, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said yesterday, issuing the strongest warning to date on Tokyo’s readiness to intervene in the currency market to arrest sharp declines in the currency. “They absolutely do not reflect fundamentals,” Katayama told a news conference on the yen’s declines after Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda’s news conference last week. “I don’t believe they would have gone that far unless there were speculative moves. The government will take appropriate action against excessive moves” based on Japan’s agreement with the US in September on exchange-rate policy, she said. HONG KONG: Global investors are increasing their wagers on Chinese artificial intelligence companies, betting on the next DeepSeek and seeking to diversify, with concerns growing about a speculative bubble in the sector on Wall Street. Demand for China’s AI firms is also being stimulated by Beijing’s push for tech independence. China has fast-tracked blockbuster listings of chipmakers, notably Moore Threads, dubbed “China’s Nvidia”, and MetaX , which both debuted this month. Foreigners see China closing the tech gap with the United States as Beijing steps up support for AI chipmakers, spurring bets on Chinese firms just as worries grow over lofty valuations on US-listed AI stocks. UK-based asset manager Ruffer,

for example, said it has “deliberately limited exposure” to the Magnificent Seven – the US tech giants – and is looking to add positions in Alibaba for a bigger exposure to China’s AI theme. “While the US remains the leader in frontier AI, China is rapidly narrowing the gap,” said Gemma Cairns-Smith, investment specialist at Ruffer. “The moat may not be as wide, or as deep, as many think. The competitive landscape is shifting.” Ruffer is gaining exposure to the AI theme through Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba, which operates an AI chip unit, owns large language model Qwen, and is ploughing money into cloud infrastructure. Global asset managers are increasingly eyeing Chinese AI The remarks mostly echo those she made in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday. The yen rose to around 156 per US dollar on her remarks yesterday, though it was not too far from the 11-month low of 157.78 touched on Friday. In a joint statement issued in September, Japan and the US reaffirmed their commitment to “market-determined” currency rates, while agreeing that foreign exchange interventions should be reserved for combating excess volatility. Japanese policymakers have cited the statement as giving them the right to intervene when yen moves deviate from economic fundamentals and make excessively big swings. Tokyo last stepped into the

Japan ready to take action in yen market, says minister