Daily forex deals hit record high of US$15.18b in April

This article was published by the Taiwan Headlines on June 7, 2006. It reports that Taiwan's average daily foreign exchange turnover hit a new high of US$15.18 billion in April 2006. It represented an increase of US$1 billion from March.

According to the Central Bank of China in Taiwan, the nation's growing external trade and the increasing availability of financial hedging items are the main reasons behind the active foreign exchange trading in Taiwan's financial market. Indeed, Taiwan's growing financial market has also helped activate the foreign exchange market. This rising foreign exchange turnover in April is expected to continue in May 2006.

According to statistics provided by the Central Bank of China, spot foreign exchange trading accounted for 53.6 percent, or US$8.13 billion, of the total turner in Taiwan's foreign exchange market. Compared to the figure in March 2006, the spot trading value posted a sharp rise of US$880 million in April.

Meanwhile, forward trading, a popular hedging item in the market, also increased by US$280 million. It was the highest growth among all the hedging items.

In April 2006, exchanges between foreign currencies accounted for 50.9 percent of the total foreign exchange trading in the market. The exchanges between the U.S. dollar and Japanese yen took the largest portion of 18.2 percent, followed by those between the U.S. dollar and euro (14 percent) and those between the U.S. dollar and British Pound (4 percent).