One US dollar will be worth 18,932 Vietnamese dong tomorrow, up from 18,544 since February. This 2.1 per cent devaluation is the third since November of last year. The move will help exports in a country recently downgraded by Fitch.
Recent dong devaluations:
(1) November 2009 (16,992->17,941, 3.4 per cent);
(2) February 2010 (17,941->18,544, 5.6 per cent). Read more
Vietnam’s central bank said on Wednesday it was devaluing the dong’s mid-point reference rate by more than 3 per cent to 18,544 per dollar from 17,941 effective on Thursday. The move was designed to help balance supply and demand of foreign exchange, increase the liquidity of foreign exchange in the market and contribute to controling the trade deficit and stabilising the macroeconomy, the bank told Reuters.
Vietnam devalued the dong by more than 5 per cent in November of last year. Read more
Upgraded outlook for Venezuela
Standard & Poor’s upgraded its outlook on Venezuela to stable from poor in a show of support for the country’s recent currency devaluation.
“We revised the outlook to stable because we believe that the latest government devaluation of the currency, combined with prospects for stable oil revenues, will reduce Venezuela’s fiscal pressures,” said Roberto Sifon Arevalo, a credit analyst at S&P. Read more
Long queues are reported at shops in Caracas, following the surprise devaluation of the bolivar on Friday.
President Hugo Chávez announced a new multi-tiered exchange rate regime. The official value of the dollar, which has remained at 2.15 bolivars since March 2005, will now be fixed at 2.6 bolivars, a rate reserved for the import of essential goods such as food and medicine. Read more
Competitive devaluations threaten trade wars, says Michael Pettis, citing the Vietnamese devaluation. The theory is that countries unable to devalue will be forced to raise tariffs. This comes as North Korea strikes two zeros off its currency, the won. But the picture is more complex than that. Chris Giles agrees that competitive devaluations could lead to currency trade wars, but argues the devaluation of the dong – still under pressure – is not the trigger. Neither is the won.
Creditors of Dubai World, including hedge funds and banks, have formed a group. It seems that investors in $3.5bn of Nakheel’s bonds will form 25 per cent of the issue, meaning they can block bond restructuring plans. Read more
Vietnam announced on Wednesday that it will devalue the dong by over 5 per cent, raise interest rates and request big exporters to sell foreign exchange to the central bank in a dramatic attempt to underpin the beleaguered currency. The central bank also said it would reduce the trading band of the dong against the dollar to 3 per cent above and below a daily mid-point set by the central bank from 5 per cent (Reuters, more here). Read more
Quantitative easing set to expand as fresh capital is required, particularly in emerging markets. London’s competitiveness as a financial centre is threatened and rumours of devaluation in Switzerland and Venezuela Read more
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Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS
Michael Steen, Frankfurt bureau chief, covers the ECB and the eurozone's economies. He joined the Financial Times in 2007 as Amsterdam correspondent and later worked as a front page news editor in London. Before joining the FT, he spent nine years as a correspondent at Reuters, mostly in foreign postings that included a previous stint in Frankfurt, as well as Moscow, Kiev and central Asia. He read German and Russian at Cambridge.RSS
Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS
Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS
Claire Jones is Money Supply economics team writer, based in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal and CentralBanking.com. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS
