Taiwan shares closed up 0.54 percent on Saturday, near a 6-1/2-year high, led by China plays such as Uni-President, as a stronger yuan boosted hopes of growing demand on the mainland. The main TAIEX shares index rose to 8,045.12, slightly below the 8,084 level, the highest in the last 6-1/2 years.
The top gainer was the food sub-index, which jumped 2.56 percent after the yuan ended higher on Friday against the dollar after touching a post-revaluation peak. The tourism sub-index gained 0.03 percent and the heavily weighted electronics sub-index rose 0.39 percent.
"A higher yuan is good news for China plays, especially food makers and local distributors, which would benefit most from rising domestic demand," said analyst Chiang Chen-sheng of Masterlink Investment Advisory.
Uni-President Enterprise, Taiwan's top food conglomerate with a heavy exposure in the China market, gained 1.94 percent. Wei Chuan Foods advanced 4.59 percent. Trading volume was light at T$75 billion ($2.27 billion) on Saturday, a rare trading session as the market opened to make up for the Tomb Sweeping Day break last week.
Tourism stocks rose after Taiwan presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou told Reuters on Friday that, if elected, he would triple the proposed volume of Chinese tourists to the island. Ambassador Hotel, one of Taiwan's top hotel chain operators, ended unchanged after rising as much as 1.3 percent during the session.
New Place was up 1.21 percent. Dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip makers ended mixed before releasing their quarterly results. Top two players, Powerchip and Nanya Tech, are set to post strong profits after boosting output and branching out into higher-margin chip production. Powerchip slipped 0.25 percent and Nayna advanced 0.87 percent.
Mobile phone maker Inventec Appliances Corp slumped by the daily 7-percent limit for a second day after prosecutors said they were investigating the company for possible insider trading.
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