The nation’s leading economic indicator index was unchanged last month from a month earlier, indicating that the country’s export-oriented economy will grow moderately in the upcoming six months after fast expansion in the first three quarters of this year, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said yesterday.
The leading indicator index, which consists of seven major leading economic gauges, including -export orders, stock prices, -building permits and producers’ inventory, remained unchanged at 119.3 last month, the report showed.
“The latest data showed the economy will see moderate expansion next year” with the pace of growth to slow compared with this year, Hung Jui-bin (洪瑞彬), -director-general of the council’s economic research department, told a media briefing.
Emerging economies in Asia will provide the catalyst, while the US, Europe and Japan struggle to battle stagnation, Hung said, citing forecasts by research institutions in Taiwan and abroad.
The annualized six-month rate of change, which better captures the prospect of business ahead, shed one point last month from a month earlier, falling for the 12th consecutive month, the report said.
“The readings of various [economic] indexes are not bad given their high base during the same period last year,” Hung said.
Except stock prices, six out of the seven indices slid last month from October, the report showed. The semiconductor book-to-bill ratio dropped to 0.96 points last month from 0.98 a month earlier, marginally below the neutral threshold.
The nation is home to the world’s largest contract makers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電).
The coincident index, used to reflect the nation’s current economic condition, inched up 0.8 percent to 105.9 last month because of continued improvement in non-farm employment as well as wholesale, retail and food services, the report said.
However, the indices on real -customs-cleared exports and imports of machineries and electrical equipment registered negative -cyclical movements, the report said.
Wu Ming-hui (吳明蕙), an analyst at the CEPD, said the council remains cautiously optimistic about the economic outlook as the nation’s GDP is forecast to expand by about 4.5 percent next year from this year, according to estimates.
The economy is expected to grow 4.51 percent next year from this year, the Directorate-General of Accounting, Budget and Statistics predicted last month, lower than the 4.71 percent forecast by Academia Sinica, the 4.62 percent forecast by Polaris Research Institute (寶華綜合經濟研究院) and the 4.55 forecast by the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (中經院).
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to