The nation’s leading indicators declined for the 23rd straight month last month, indicating that the economy would remain sluggish, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said yesterday.
The composite index of leading indicators, a gauge of the economic outlook in the next six months, stood at 126.8 points last month, down 0.2 percent from September, the council said.
The index’s annualized six-month rate of change, which provides a more accurate forecast of the business cycle in the near term, slipped 0.5 percentage points to minus 0.7 points last month, representing 23 months of consecutive falls, the lengthiest decline ever, the council said in a report.
It was also the second straight month that the figure turned negative, the report showed.
“The eurozone’s debt crisis was still the main factor that dragged down the leading indicators,” Council for Economic Planning and Development Vice Chairman Hu Chung-ying (胡仲英) told reporters.
Hu said he expected the economy to start recovering from the second quarter of next year after bottoming out in the first quarter.
However, the pace of recovery might be delayed if the leading indicators continued to decline in the following months, Hu added.
Of the seven components that make up the index of leading indicators, only the producer’s inventory for manufacturing reversed up, while the other six components — average monthly overtime in industry and services, export orders, building permits, real monetary aggregates M1B, stock prices and the semiconductor sector’s book-to-bill ratio — all showed declines, the council said.
Meanwhile, the composite index of coincident indicators slid 0.6 percent to 129.2 points last month from September’s 130. It was the 10th consecutive month of decline, with the trend-adjusted index decreasing 1.5 percent to 95.3, the report showed.
As for the lagging indicators, the index stood at 146.1 last month, up 1.3 percent from September, with the trend-adjusted index rising 0.4 percent to 107.8, data showed.
The total score for the monitoring indicators dropped by 1 point to 20 last month and flashed a “yellow-blue” signal for the third straight month, data showed.
Asked about the risk of the monitoring indicators’ score falling to 16, or flashing a “blue” signal, indicating a recession, Hu said: “However, there are only two months left for this year.”
He did not elaborate.
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