By Gina Lee

Investing.com – The dollar was up on Thursday morning in Asia hitting its highest level in a month as the U.S. Federal Reserve plans to begin asset tapering and raise interest hikes a lot sooner than its developed market peers.

The that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies inched up 0.01% to 93.470 by 10:44 PM ET (2:44 AM GMT).

The pair inched up 0.10% to 109.89. Japanese markets close for holidays.

The pair edged down 0.15% to 0.7234 and the pair was down 0.21% to 0.6995.

The pair edged up 0.17% to 6.4690 and the pair inched up 0.01% to 1.3626.

The Fed did not announce that it would begin asset tapering as it on Wednesday. The central bank stated that “a moderated pace in asset purchases may soon become warranted”, and Chairman Jerome Powell said that the board believed that tapering would end around 2022. This could open the door to interest rate increases.

Although Powell didn’t provide any details about when the taper would begin, he stated that there was widespread agreement on the conclusion of asset tapering. He said it ended around mid-2022. John Briggs stated this to Reuters.

We believe this is more significant than the start of tapering, because it sets the timer for when the next hike might occur.

In addition, the safe-haven currency yen fell 0.5% in the current session after the Fed policy announcement. Meanwhile, the kept its interest rate steady at -0.10% as it handed down its latest policy decision on Wednesday. BOJ, European Central Bank and IMF are unlikely to raise interest rates in the near future.

The yen also suffered some losses on Wednesday after developer China Evergrande Group’s (HK:) main unit . The interest payment on the offshore bond, which is due to be paid $83.5million on Thursday, still needs to be made.

Meanwhile, the and are among the central banks handing down their policy decisions later in the day, with the latter widely expected to deliver the first hike among G10 central banks.