A local industrial research and development center yesterday once again lowered its forecast for the production value of Taiwan’s manufacturing sector this year, citing worse-than-expected exports.
The sector’s production value will grow by an annual 2.47 percent to NT$17.5 trillion (US$593.79 billion) this year, the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center (IEK) said.
THIRD TIME
The 2.47 percent forecast outpaces the annual growth of 0.97 percent recorded last year, but it was the third time this year that the IEK has cut its growth forecast amid slowing export growth.
In July, it lowered its projection from 4.23 percent to 2.84 percent, then trimmed it to 2.73 percent last month.
Peter Chen (陳志強), a manager at the IEK, said that the manufacturing sector’s output growth projection would have been raised if Taiwan had not registered worse-than-expected exports in September and last month.
MINISTRY
Taiwan’s exports fell by 7 percent in September and 1.5 percent last month year-on-year to US$25.2 billion and US$26.12 billion respectively, the Ministry of Finance reported last week.
IEK forecast the production value of the local manufacturing sector to rise 2.43 percent year-on-year this quarter.
This follows increases of 2.53 percent last quarter, 2.2 percent in the second quarter and 2.74 percent in the first quarter.
For next year, the production value is forecast to grow by an annual 3.42 percent to NT$18.09 trillion, it added.
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