DBS Bank (星展銀行) has maintained its GDP growth forecast for the nation at 1.9 percent for this year, as better-than-expected investment has offset declining exports, Singapore-based DBS economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) told a news conference in Taipei.
That compares with a growth estimate of 2.2 percent by Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), 2.1 percent by Standard Chartered Bank (渣打銀行), 2.01 percent by Academia Sinica and 2.06 percent by the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (中華經濟研究院).
DBS has cut its GDP growth forecast for Singapore from 3 percent to 0.7 percent due to slumping exports and has lowered its forecast for Hong Kong from 2.5 percent to less than 2 percent due to political events, Ma said.
“Taiwan is likely to rank second among the four Asian Dragons, after only South Korea’s 2.1 percent growth,” Ma said.
Taiwanese exports showed a slight pickup of 0.5 percent last month from a year earlier after five consecutive months of declines, but the whole year’s exports are still expected to decline by less than 5 percent from last year, Ma said.
By comparison, domestic investment is forecast to grow 4.9 percent this year, the highest in six years, on the back of 93 returning businesses investing about NT$452 billion (US$14.54 billion), she said.
“Taiwan has seen capital goods imports continue to climb this year, which was strange at first glance considering that the nation’s exports were plummeting, but it makes sense as more Taiwanese firms prepare to move home,” Ma said.
Most of the returning firms belong to the information and communications technology sector, as they try to avoid extra tariffs amid a trade dispute between China and the US, she said.
Overall, a growing service industry, increasing arrivals of foreign tourists, rising exports to the US, solid private consumption and mild inflation have also helped the nation’s economy mitigate the effects of falling exports, she said.
The nation is forecast to post 1.7 percent GDP growth in the second quarter, flat from the previous quarter, and 1.9 percent and 2.2 percent growth respectively in the third and fourth quarters, she added.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics is scheduled to reveal second-quarter GDP growth and update its full-year GDP forecast next month after trimming its forecast from 2.27 percent to 2.19 percent in May.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS