By Alex Ho
Investing.com - The U.S. dollar inched up on Wednesday in Asia after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point as expected.
The U.S. dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies was up 0.1% to 97.205 by 12:33 AM ET (04:33 GMT).
“My colleagues and I took this action to help the U.S. economy keep strong in the face of new risks to the economic outlook,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told a press conference in Washington. “The spread of the coronavirus has brought new challenges and risks.”
On Tuesday, the World Health Organization said the novel coronavirus doesn’t transmit as efficiently as influenza but the fatality rate is higher at 3.4%.
Number of infections continued to rise globally this week, as JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) & Co. asked thousands of U.S. employees to work from home, and Ford Motor (NYSE:F) Co. banned all business travel.
Meanwhile, global finance ministers and central bank governors held a rare conference call yesterday and pledged to “do whatever it takes” to support a slowing economy due to the virus outbreak, but did not confirmed any concrete plans.
The USD/CNY pair rose 0.3% at 6.9350.
The People's Bank of China (PBOC) kept its short-term borrowing costs steady on Wednesday, despite the Fed’s emergency policy rate cut overnight.
The decision by the PBOC on Wednesday came just hours after its U.S. counterpart delivered a rate cut.
The USD/JPY pair was up 0.2% to 107.37.
Wednesday's data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed the Australian economy accelerated by 0.5% last quarter. Meanwhile, the previous quarter’s GDP was revised upwards to show 0.6% increase from 0.4% earlier.
Economists had predicted a quarterly rate of 0.3%.