The nation’s economy last quarter expanded 2.41 percent annually, beating the government’s May estimate of 1.78 percent on the back of better-than-expected private investment and exports, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
“Exports and private investment fared stronger than our expectations, thanks to order transfers and capital repatriation,” DGBAS Senior Executive Officer Huang Wei-jie (黃偉傑) told a media briefing in Taipei.
External demand contributed 0.72 percentage points to GDP growth during the April-to-June period, versus a drag three months earlier, as the decline in exports tapered to 2.58 percent. The agency had forecast a 3.43 percent decline.
Photo: Cheng Chi-fang, Taipei Times
Demand for semiconductors and electronics, the mainstay of Taiwanese exports, started to pick up, although most other categories continued to disappoint, Huang said.
As several firms have shifted part of their manufacturing capacity back home amid a trade dispute between China and the US, exports of information and communications products increased 20.15 percent, the agency said.
Exports are likely to gain more momentum after returning to growth in June, thanks to the arrival of a peak season for technology products, the Ministry of Finance said last month.
Major technology firms gave positive guidance in recent earnings conferences, but were wary of headwinds at home and abroad.
Exports of goods and services would grow 4.11 percent annually if excluding a price decline of 5.57 percent in US dollar terms, Huang said.
Capital formation proved the biggest growth driver with a 6.04 percent increase from a year earlier, contributing 1.23 percentage points to GDP growth, the agency said.
The showing beat the agency’s May forecast of a 5.3 percent gain.
“The pace of capital repatriation is much faster than the government’s expectations,” Huang said.
Imports of capital equipment rose 15.95 percent in US dollar terms, as firms raised capital expenditure to maintain technology leadership and seize 5G business opportunities, DGBAS said.
Consumer spending rose 1.57 percent, slower than a projection of 1.76 percent, the agency said.
Meanwhile, daily stock turnover shrank 21.17 percent from a year earlier, subduing the benefits of modest growth in retail, wholesale and dining businesses, it said.
Washington’s tariff hikes on Chinese goods in May unnerved investors, but the sentiment has recovered considerably after the two sides agreed on a truce in June and resumed trade negotiations this week.
In the first two quarters, Taiwan’s economy grew 2.07 percent and is expected to continue growing in the coming quarters.
The agency is to announce its new growth forecast on Aug. 16.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to