The government is likely to make an upward revision on Thursday to its second-quarter GDP outlooks and major economic data for the rest of the year on improving external demand a limited impact by Typhoon Morakot on the local economy, analysts said yesterday.
The Chinese-language Economic Daily News yesterday quoted President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as saying that the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) may revise its GDP forecast upward for the year and has assured him that the local economy would expand by 3.8 percent next year.
During the interview, Ma said that the typhoon’s impact on the local economy would be limited.
He said that increased government spending and private investment after the typhoon would be reflected in economic figures from the fourth quarter, the report showed.
A DGBAS official yesterday confirmed that the local economy would probably expand by more than 3 percent next year, lower than most market forecasts, after shrinking by the steepest level on record this year.
“It’s safe to say that GDP growth is going to be more than 3 percent next year. That’s what most research houses are forecasting as well,” the official said.
He declined to be identified or provide a specific figure.
A Reuters poll in July, however, yielded a median projection of 4 percent for next year’s growth.
Yesterday, Singapore’s DBS said it expected Taiwan’s GDP of about US$390 billion to expand 4.3 percent next year, while Standard Chartered’s forecast was for 3.1 percent growth.
As for the second-quarter GDP, the DGBAS predicted in May that the economy would contract 8.5 percent between April and June from a year earlier after the recession deepened in the first three months.
Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂), head economist at Citigroup Taiwan Inc, put the decline at 7.8 percent last quarter, owing to better-than-expected exports and private investment.
Cheng said the statistics agency would probably raise GDP for the year to a decline of 4 percent, from a contraction of 4.25 percent, after the US and China both posted stronger second-quarter GDP data.
“Taiwan will benefit from the economic rebounds of its two biggest trade partners,” Cheng said by telephone.
Tony Phoo (符銘財), chief economist of Standard Chartered Bank, said the economy may have shrunk between 7 percent or 8 percent last quarter as all economic gauges slid amid the global downturn.
Private investment plunged 39 percent in the second quarter despite reports of purchase of capital goods, Phoo said.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS