The Taiwanese economy would grow 2.2 percent next year, outperforming major neighboring economies, Standard Chartered Bank said at a news conference in Taipei on Thursday.
The nation might continue to benefit from order transfers and trade rerouting to avoid tariffs imposed by Washington on Chinese goods, senior economist for East Asia Tony Phoo (符銘財) said.
The Singaporean economy is forecast to grow 1.4 percent next year, while Hong Kong’s is expected to contract 1.5 percent, the bank said.
Taiwan is likely to run neck and neck with South Korea, it added.
The bank was less optimistic than the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, which last month raised its GDP growth forecast for next year from 2.58 percent to 2.72 percent.
Standard Chartered would upgrade its projection if needed, as an increasing number of Taiwanese firms increase the share of their production at home to avoid the trade conflict, Phoo said.
The local semiconductor industry enjoys robust demand from global clients and many chip companies have poured funds into adopting high-end production processes, he said
A growing IC industry would help propel the overall economy, as the semiconductor industry is the backbone of Taiwan’s manufacturing sector, he added.
Taiwanese firms have over the past several years channeled funds to Southeast Asian markets to cut their economic dependence on China and take advantage of the fast-growing economies, Phoo said, citing Ministry of Economic Affairs data.
China now accounts for less than 50 percent of Taiwan’s total investment, down from a recent peak of 70 to 80 percent, he said.
Taiwan’s GDP growth should hit 3 percent in the first half of next year before slowing in the second half due in part to the base effect, Phoo said.
The second-half performance would depend on how the US-China trade dispute pans out and how the US economy unfolds ahead of the US presidential election, he said.
The Taiwanese economy should grow 2.4 percent this year, Phoo said, lower than the government’s estimate, but up from the bank’s projection in August of 2.1 percent.
Standard Chartered forecast that the global economy would grow 3.3 percent next year, picking up pace from an anticipated 3.1 percent increase for this year, on the back of ample liquidity, looser monetary policies, growth momentum in Asia and greater demand for electronic devices.
The bank said it is confident that trade ties between Washington and Beijing would improve and help boost the global economy.
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