The outlook for the nation’s manufacturing and service sectors improved for the third consecutive month last month, indicating that the nation’s economy is on track to recovery, a survey by local think tank the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台灣經濟研究院) showed yesterday.
The business climate gauge for the manufacturing sector rose to 98.53 points, hitting its highest level in the 22-month period since March 2011, TIER’s survey showed. That was up 4.08 points from a revised 94.45 points in December last year.
The climate gauge for the service sector also reached a new high since March last year, rising to 96.14 points, up 3.82 from a revised 92.32 in December last year, the survey said.
“The signs of recovery are clear and manufacturers have started to feel more optimistic .... Export growth and stock prices both increased last month,” Gordon Sun (孫明德), director of the institute’s macroeconomic forecasting center, told a media briefing.
However, Sun cautioned that financial problems in the US and depreciation policies undertaken by governments around the world remained threats to the nation’s economy.
“We are paying close attention to the direction taken by the new president of South Korea [Park Geun-hye] regarding the country’s currency policy, as well as the US efforts to find a way to deal with its financial cliff in May,” Sun said, adding that those two factors would have an impact on Taiwan’s economy.
In the survey, 26.8 percent of the manufacturers polled said they were optimistic about business last month, up from 20 percent of those polled in the December survey last year.
Respondents said that they had benefited from the improved economic conditions this year and also from rising consumption in China during the Lunar New Year holidays, said Darson Chiu (邱達生), an associate research fellow at TIER.
Asked about business prospects over the next six months, 45 percent of those surveyed felt bullish, up from 35.9 percent in December last year, because of the upcoming launches of new electronics products and inventory replenishment demand next quarter, Chiu said. Those who felt bearish stood at 8.9 percent last month, down from the 15.9 percent found in December last year.
In the service sector, higher stock prices last month helped the financial industry grow and made consumers more willing to increase their spending, Chiu said.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained