Barclays Capital Inc yesterday raised its forecast for Taiwan’s GDP growth this year to 7.5 percent from its previous estimate of 6 percent following a strong and steady recovery from the recent downturn.
Barclays forecast is higher than the government’s estimate of 6.14 percent growth and is the highest among foreign banks in Taiwan. It is followed by Citigroup Taiwan Inc, which earlier this month said it expected the economy to expand 7.2 percent this year.
“Fueled by the strong tonic of low interest rates and ample liquidity, [Taiwan’s] seasonally adjusted economic growth clocked a healthy pace of 7.2 percent in the first quarter,” the British investment bank said in its latest Emerging Markets Quarterly.
The report said Taiwan was the only economy in Asia to post four consecutive strong quarters of momentum, although first-quarter GDP growth eased from the 18 percent registered in the fourth quarter of last year.
“With the strong first-quarter GDP report, the economy has recovered past its pre-crisis peak, with the output gap close to zero and likely to turn positive in the second quarter,” the bank said.
These positive factors have lent weight to the bank’s view that the central bank would normalize its policy rates during an upcoming board meeting next month, pushing up interest rates by 12.5 basis points.
The labor market also performed well in the first quarter, leading electronics companies to pay record bonuses to employees early this year, the report said.
A pickup in wages also helped boost private consumption by 3.04 percent from a year ago, it said.
“We expect further upside for discretionary spending in the second quarter of this year,” it said.
The bank also said that private investment was “re-awakening,” as semiconductor firms had expanded their LCD and LED production capacities.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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