The nation is expected to continue to benefit from a global economic recovery and report a 2.3 percent increase in GDP this year, compared with an expected 2.5 percent increase last year, HSBC Holdings PLC forecast yesterday.
HSBC Private Bank managing director and head of investment strategy for Asia Fan Cheuk Wan (范卓雲) told a news conference in Taipei that the economy is expected to grow at a “stable” pace this year, despite a slower increase last year.
Exports are expected to keep pushing up the nation’s GDP growth this year on the back of increased global demand, Fan said.
Analysts have agreed that the nation would see moderate growth this year due to a relatively high comparison base last year.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) in November last year forecast that the nation would see a 2.58 percent increase in GDP last year and would post a 2.29 percent increase this year, up from a 1.41 percent increase in 2016.
The DGBAS is expected to update its GDP growth forecast next month.
While the nation is expected to report GDP growth of more than 2 percent for the second consecutive year this year, the growth would be lower than the other three “Asian tigers,” Fan said.
Hong Kong’s economy is expected to grow 2.7 percent this year, Singapore’s by 2.7 percent and South Korea’s by 2.6 percent, Fan said.
China, the world’s second-largest economy, could see GDP growth of 6.7 percent this year, the same pace as last year, HSBC said.
With the continued growth in the global economy and ample liquidity, as well as an improvement in corporate earnings around the world, Fan said she is upbeat about the performance of equity markets worldwide this year.
Meanwhile, the US Federal Reserve is likely to implement interest rate increases at a slower pace this year by raising its key rates only twice, while the US economy is expected to grow 2.4 percent this year after expected growth of 2.3 percent last year, Fan said.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts