British banking group Standard Chartered PLC remains upbeat about Taiwan’s economic growth outlook for the first quarter this year, despite weaker-than-expected figures in the final quarter of last year.
Citing weaker domestic demand, the country’s real GDP growth slowed to 3.17 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of last year, from 3.63 percent year-on-year growth in the previous quarter.
Standard Chartered has nevertheless remained upbeat on near-term growth prospects as the local economy expanded by 4.76 percent sequentially in the October-to-December period on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis — the fastest since the fourth quarter of 2013 — indicating that the growth recovery has gained momentum.
“Recent data show that the growth recovery has spread from technology exports to the wider economy,” Taipei-based Standard Chartered economist Tony Phoo (符銘財) said.
“We expect private consumption — the main drag on the fourth-quarter growth — to rebound with rising optimism on household incomes and the job market,” he wrote in a research note last week that did not give a specific forecast for first-quarter GDP growth.
Phoo said that consumer confidence rebounded for three consecutive months to a record high last month, supported by rising optimism on household income and the job market.
This should allay concerns over months of food safety problems that local media have blamed for softer-than-expected private consumption in the fourth quarter, he said.
Moreover, anticipated economic growth recovery in the US and steady global demand for consumer technology should continue to support Taiwan’s technology sector, while several large tech exporters have reported improving orders early this year and plan to increase capital expenditures, Phoo said.
“This should support manufacturing employment. We expect the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate to remain below 4 percent for most of 2015, which should be positive for consumer confidence and spending,” the economist said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by