"There's a perception that central banks in Asia are allowing their currencies to appreciate so as to curb imported inflation," Lee Wai Tuck, a strategist at Forecast Pte in Singapore, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. "There are some concerns that if currencies do not appreciate, inflation may go even higher" in countries including China and Singapore, he said.
The yen against all 16 major peers. Japan's retail sales dropped 6.1% in March from a year earlier after rising 0.1% in February, according to the median estimate of economists in a Bloomberg News survey before the government data due April 27.
Japan Forecast
The Bank of Japan may cut its forecast for real growth for fiscal 2011 to 0.8% from 1.6% as a result of the March 11 earthquake, the Nikkei newspaper reported today. The central bank will keep its benchmark interest rate at a range between zero and 0.1% at its next meeting, according to all of 13 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
About four shares declined for every three that climbed in MSCI's Asia Pacific Index, which slipped 0.2% today. The Shanghai Composite dropped 1.5%, led by China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. and China Shenhua Energy Co., after CICC said consumer prices may rise between 5.2% and 5.5% in April. The government has a full-year inflation target of 4%.
Posco slipped 1.9% in Korea after the world's third- biggest steelmaker by output said first-quarter profit dropped 33%. Acer Inc. sank 3.1% in Taiwan after the world's second-largest supplier of notebook computers reported the lowest quarterly profit in six years. Reliance Industries Ltd., India's biggest company by market value, fell 3% in India after posting net income that missed analyst forecasts.
Since April 11, just 42% of the 71 companies in the MSCI Asia Pacific that reported per-share earnings have beaten analyst predictions, compared with about 69% in the MSCI World Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.