Taiwan’s projected economic recession may persist into 2011 as external economic shocks continue to deteriorate, analysts said.
Wang To-far (王塗發), an economics professor at National Taipei University, said the current international financial turmoil was unprecedented and that Taiwan was unlikely to rebound quickly, as slowing demand from the world’s leading economies would hurt the nation’s export-oriented economy.
The global economic downturn has spread to large financial institutions and has affected consumer-related industries, such as electronics, clothing and shoes, leading to a contraction in export orders for Asian countries, said Nicholas Kwan (關家明), regional head of research for Asia at Standard Chartered Bank.
Kwan predicted that the overall situation would worsen in the first half of next year. However, if global financial woes could be solved by the first quarter of next year, Asian economies will likely bottom out sooner, he said, adding that US quarterly economic growth will not be able to reach between 2 percent and 2.5 percent until 2010 at the earliest.
The government projected last week that the economy would recover in the second-half of next year, but Wang said it was unlikely.
Citing IMF and The Economist reports, which both pointed out that next year’s global economy would be even worse than this year, Wang said he doubted that the nation’s economy would show a quick V-shaped recovery within a year.
He expects the local economy to hit bottom in the fourth quarter of next year, and stay weak for two more years before rebounding in the third year, forming a so-called U-shaped recovery.
Wang warned that if President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration continues to expand cross-strait economic and trade relations, facilitating more outflow of Taiwan’s capital and driving up the jobless rate, it will take longer for the nation’s economy to recover.
When asked whether the Taiwanese economy will become L-shaped, Wang said he believed it would not be that serious, as the world has only experienced two significant L-shaped recessions — one was the Great Depression and the other was Japan’s recession that began in 1990.
Taiwan is not likely to head into a deep and prolonged recession, because the nation is closely tied to the world economy, Wang said.
Kenneth Lin (林向愷), an economics professor at National Taiwan University, holds a similar view, saying the nation’s economic recovery will be U-shaped rather than V-shaped, and the recovery will not happen until 2011.
He also said the government was too optimistic to project 2.12 percent growth for next year.
Taiwan’s exports will inevitably decline sharply next year, while domestic investment and consumption are also not likely to see a turnaround, Lin said, adding that he expected the nation’s economy to contract next year.
Economic recovery — usually comes in three forms: V, U, or L-shaped. A V-shaped recovery refers to a quick rebound from a recession within a year. A U-shaped recovery takes between two and five years, while an L-shaped recovery takes more than five years.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained