Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) yesterday cut its forecast for the nation’s GDP growth to 1.82 percent this year, from an earlier forecast of 2.27 percent in September, as exports and private consumption fared weaker than expected.
The downward adjustment came a day before the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics is due to update its own forecast, currently standing at 2.31 percent.
“We had warned about the cut and decided to take a move after the economy failed to show improvement,” said Achilles Chen (陳欽奇), assistant manager of economic research at the nation’s largest financial services provider by assets.
Exports, which account for more than 70 percent of GDP, remained in contraction mode last month, posting a mere 1 percent increase in the first 10 months compared with the same period last year.
Export orders, a reliable indicator of actual exports one to three months ahead, declined 0.2 percent between January and last month, though they expanded 3.7 percent last month, Cathay Financial said.
External demand is excpected to improve further this quarter as the economic recovery in the US, Europe and China remains on track, but the pace is not going to be strong enough for Taiwan to avert a GDP revision, Cathay Financial said.
At home, commercial trade rose 1.8 percent to a record high of NT$1.24 trillion (US$4183 billion) last month, but the cumulative value grew just 0.2 percent from the previous year, Cathay Financial said.
The insignificant growth reflected soft consumer confidence, though the situation is showing a modest pickup in the current quarter, Chen said.
Overall, Taiwan lags behind the global economic recovery due to the growing amount of overseas production among its manufacturing firms, Cathay Financial said.
As more firms manufacture goods overseas — from 12.4 percent in January 2000 to 52.9 percent last month — the gap between export orders and exports widen, and their contribution to domestic GDP declines, Cathay Financial said.
The company urged the government to encourage more Taiwanese firms abroad to return home and invest by offering more incentives.
“Doing so can effectively boost employment and domestic demand, making Taiwan less dependent on external demand and thus less vulnerable to external shocks,” Cathay Financial said.
Talks of free-trade agreements with other countries are also positive in helping to enhance the competitiveness of local firms on the world stage, as the world’s economic blocs increasingly integrate, Cathay Financial said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the