The nation’s leading economic indicator continued its uptrend last month, but rising concerns over the discovery of the chemical di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, or DEHP, in food products may hurt private consumption in the near term, the Council for Economic Planning and Development said yesterday.
Taiwan Business Indicators, which measures the economic outlook for the upcoming six-month period, rose 0.3 percent to 128 points last month from the previous month, according to the council’s statistics.
The index’s annualized six-month rate of change, which provides a more accurate forecast of business cycles, remained the same at 3.6 percent, terminating 16 months of consecutive decline, evidence that the nation’s economic expansion is more stable, data showed.
“The increasing leading indicator proved the nation’s continuing economic expansion, but the recent DEHP contamination scare may strike food and beverage industries, as well as decrease domestic consumption,” council Deputy Minister Hu Chung-ying (胡仲英) told a media briefing.
The latest leading indicator indexes of the G7 developed countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and five Asian countries (Japan, China, South Korea, India and Indonesia) all rebounded for the seventh straight month, showing that the global economy continued to expand, Hu said.
However, rising uncertainties — including the eurozone’s debt crisis and worse-than-expected economic results in US — indicated the global economy, including Taiwan’s, may only expand slightly in the near term on a lack of drivers, Hu said.
Of the seven components comprising the leading index, only the SEMI book-to-bill ratio and average monthly overtime in industry and services experienced cyclical movement last month, while the other five moved down, the report said.
The other five components include producers’ inventory for manufacturing, export orders, real monetary aggregates M1B, building permits and stock prices, the council’s data showed.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by