In spite of lower-than-expected growth in the first quarter, the government has no plan to reverse the increases in the minimum wage made at the beginning of last month, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said yesterday.
“We won’t change the stated policy that has raised the minimum wage” even after the first-quarter GDP data is finalized this month, Jiang said.
He decided on April 2 to increase the minimum wage by 1.42 percent, from NT$18,780 to NT$19,047 effective April 1, after confirming with the Directorate-Generate of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) that first-quarter GDP growth had exceeded 3 percent.
A GDP growth of more than 3 percent for two quarters in a row or an unemployment rate of less than 4 percent for two consecutive months were the conditions set by the Cabinet to increase the monthly minimum wage.
GDP growth in the fourth quarter of last year was 3.72 percent.
The DGBAS yesterday said the advance estimate of first-quarter GDP could be lower than the estimate of 3.26 percent made in February, falling to 1.54 percent because of weak exports.
Jiang said other countries such as Singapore and South Korea had also revised their first-quarter GDP forecasts downwards.
That meant that the European debt crisis was still hurting the world economy, he said.
The adjustment came because exports were not as good as expected and domestic private consumption contributed less to economic growth than expected, Jiang said.
However, the Executive Yuan had decided to maintain the wage increase to “reward” workers who have contributed so much to the country for years, he said.
Other economic indicators have showed signs of recovery, he said, such as the latest consumer confidence index, which increased 1.28 points to 77.29 last month, from 76.01 in March. That showed that most people in Taiwan had a positive outlook on the economy.
The 17 percent rebound in imports of capital equipment in the first quarter and exports in March that hit a 20-month high were also positive signs, he said.
Those figures showed that the economy is turning around, Jiang said, adding the public should have confidence to keep the momentum in domestic consumption going.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
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