Taiwan and Hong Kong are among the 14 markets in the Asia-Pacific region where consumer confidence has fallen sharply amid the global economic slowdown, a MasterCard Worldwide report released on Wednesday showed.
Despite the drop, Yuwa Hedrick-Wong (王月魂), a Singapore-based adviser to MasterCard Asia-Pacific, said the recent cross-strait deals signed by Taiwan and China were expected to help bolster consumer confidence in Taiwan.
In its latest report, MasterCard Worldwide found that consumer confidence in the Asia-Pacific region fell 7 points compared with six months ago, with 70 percent of the respondents saying they planned to cut back on discretionary spending in the next 12 months.
Consumer confidence in Taiwan was the lowest among the 14 markets, with 90.8 percent of consumers saying they planned to reduce discretionary spending in the next 12 months.
The report showed that Taiwan and Hong Kong were the hardest hit by the recent global economic turmoil, with Taiwan’s index falling to 32.1 points from 71.3 points six months ago and Hong Kong’s index falling from 83.1 points to 41.8 points.
Wang attributed the plunge in Taiwan’s consumer confidence to the “awakening” of local consumers after switching their focus from the presidential election campaign in the first half to the worsening economic conditions.
However, Wang expressed confidence that Taiwan’s consumer confidence would improve following the resumption of cross-strait talks, which he expected would help stimulate the nation’s economic growth.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
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