Taiwan’s consumer confidence index (CCI) set its highest mark in more than six years, amid positive sentiments toward employment prospects, the stock market and the domestic economy, a survey by National Central University showed yesterday.
The survey, which polled 2,376 adults across the nation from Dec. 19 to Wednesday by telephone, indicated that the CCI this month rose 1.5 points from last month to 83.16 points, the highest since March 2004.
This was the second consecutive month that the CCI set new records. Last month’s index was 81.66 points.
Of the six sub-indices in the survey, three hit their highest level on record: investment opportunity in the stock market, employment opportunity and national economic outlook.
Bolstered by the stock market, which recently hit its highest mark in almost two years, the sub-index of stock investment outlook for the next six months rose 2.9 points to 99.9 points — the largest growth among the sub-indices.
Hsu Chih-chiang (徐之強), director of the university’s Research Center for Taiwan Economic Development, attributed the upbeat investment sentiment chiefly to the rising New Taiwan dollar, the influx of overseas money into the country’s capital markets, as well as the implementation of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) — in which Taiwan and China will begin to reduce tariffs on certain goods starting next month.
The survey also revealed that the public was upbeat on the near-term job market, with the sub-index climbing to 92.1 points this month from 90.45 points last month.
The country’s jobless rate fell for the 15th consecutive month to 4.73 percent last month — the lowest since December 2008, from 4.92 percent in October, as businesses hired more workers, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said last week.
The public was also looking upbeat on the national economy over the next six months, with the sub-index rising 1.7 points to 86 points, after the government raised its GDP growth forecast for this year to 9.98 percent.
HSBC has raised its forecast for Taiwan’s GDP growth to 9.6 percent this year from a previous estimate of 7.3 percent.
The only sub-index that slowed was commodity prices, which went down 0.65 points to 52.55 points.
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