The overall monitoring indicators for the nation’s economic climate flashed “yellow-red” last month for a second month in a row, with the index at 37 points, indicating a steady economic recovery, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said yesterday.
Among the index’s nine components, non-agricultural employment and direct and indirect finance remained blue, but the former saw 0.2 percent growth after a contraction of 0.6 percent in November, the CEPD report showed.
Direct and indirect finance saw an increase of 1.5 percent, up 0.6 percentage points from 0.9 percent in November, the report said.
“Although the overall signal remained yellow-red last month, that shouldn’t be interpreted as overheating,” said Hung Jui-bin (洪瑞彬), director-general of the council’s economic research department. “The comparison base from the previous year was low.”
The score came close to the 38 point threshold for a red light, which represents overheating.
Hung said that the growth of non-agricultural employment last month showed the ailing job market was improving, which bodes well for the entire economy.
The composite leading index, used to portray the landscape one to two quarters ahead, gained 0.9 percentage points to 104.6 points, but its annualized six-month rate of change dropped to 19.9 percent, down 1.1 percentage points from a month earlier, the CEPD said.
Hung said the decline indicated the economic recovery had slowed.
Among the factors in the leading index, the semiconductor book-to-bill ratio, the real monetary aggregate M1B and the producers’ inventory index contracted from a month earlier, the report said.
The coincident index stood at 104.8 points, up 2 percentage points from a month earlier, while its trend-adjusted index rose for the 11th consecutive month, up 2.2 percentage points to 106.4 points.
Apart from sales in the wholesale, retail and food services sectors, all the other coincident indicators grew month-on-month.
Looking ahead, Hung said amid the modest global economic recovery, external demand and domestic investment and consumption would likely increase.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
RSS