Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) yesterday retained its forecast of 2.1 percent GDP growth this year, but warned that the economy is to lose steam next quarter on fragile leading indicators and domestic consumption.
Although domestic momentum might slow, robust overseas demand and increased activities in the electronics sector might help the economy expand next quarter, a joint statement released by Cathay Financial and National Central University said.
Inflation is expected to grow 1 percent annually this year, economists from Cathay Financial and the university said, matching the previous estimate in March.
“The nation’s economic climate might turn cloudy in the third quarter... The growth momentum might diminish month-by-month, but we are not concerned about a contraction, because the likelihood of such a scenario is small, only 10 percent,” the statement said.
For the full year, Taiwan has an 80 percent chance to see its economy expand by between 1.6 percent and 2.5 percent annually, thanks to stronger economic prospects in the US, China and the eurozone, the economists said.
The central bank is likely to tighten monetary policy later this year, given that there is a 50 percent chance the US Federal Reserve will hike key interest rates once by the end of this year, they said.
The bright spot is that the New Taiwan dollar might stabilize against the US dollar, ending an upward trend since the beginning of this year, they said.
A 6 percent appreciation of the local the currency versus the greenback in the first quarter wiped out NT$47.8 billion (US$1.57 billion) in income among locally listed companies, excluding financial institutions, Financial Supervisory Commission statistics showed.
The NT dollar yesterday rose NT$0.029 to NT$30.442 against the US currency.
Separately, private think tank Taiwan Research Institute yesterday raised its economic growth forecast by 0.27 percentage points to 2.01 percent.
However, the institute said the figure lags behind the global average of 3 percent, blaming the weakness on stagnant private consumption and investment.
Domestic consumption and private investment are to play a smaller role in boosting GDP, the institute said.
Domestic consumption and private investment are to account for smaller shares of 55 percent and 23 percent respectively this year, compared with their peaks of 66 percent and 35 percent, the institute said.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the