Sentiment among local manufacturers turned more cautious last month as the global economy continues its mild pace of recovery, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台灣經濟研究院) said yesterday.
The latest survey conducted by the Taipei-based institute showed that the business climate in the manufacturing sector reached 98.82 points last month, up 0.42 points from the 98.40 points recorded in July.
The survey found that fir 50.9 percent of the manufacturers polled, sentiment remained unchanged last month from a month ago, while 27 percent said they felt more optimistic and 21 percent more pessimistic.
The poll also showed that 25 percent of manufacturers were bullish about the economy over the next six months, with 20 percent feeling bearish.
TIER president David Hong (洪德生) said that the weak momentum of the global economic recovery and low expectations of sales of Apple Inc’s two new iPhone models were the main factors affecting manufacturers’ outlook.
In the service sector, the business climate gauge declined by 0.77 points to 95.6 points last month from 96.37 the previous month, with retailers, banks, brokerages, transportation and warehousing firms becoming less optimistic than they were in July, the report showed.
Gordon Sun (孫明德), director of TIER’s economic forecasting center, said that the ongoing political dispute between President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) is likely to further dampen the service sector’s sentiment this month.
Sun said that the strife could cause the review of the government’s budget plan for next year to be stalled in the legislature, which would adversely affect the stock market.
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