The nation’s leading economic indicator index was unchanged last month from a month earlier, indicating that the country’s export-oriented economy will grow moderately in the upcoming six months after fast expansion in the first three quarters of this year, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said yesterday.
The leading indicator index, which consists of seven major leading economic gauges, including -export orders, stock prices, -building permits and producers’ inventory, remained unchanged at 119.3 last month, the report showed.
“The latest data showed the economy will see moderate expansion next year” with the pace of growth to slow compared with this year, Hung Jui-bin (洪瑞彬), -director-general of the council’s economic research department, told a media briefing.
Emerging economies in Asia will provide the catalyst, while the US, Europe and Japan struggle to battle stagnation, Hung said, citing forecasts by research institutions in Taiwan and abroad.
The annualized six-month rate of change, which better captures the prospect of business ahead, shed one point last month from a month earlier, falling for the 12th consecutive month, the report said.
“The readings of various [economic] indexes are not bad given their high base during the same period last year,” Hung said.
Except stock prices, six out of the seven indices slid last month from October, the report showed. The semiconductor book-to-bill ratio dropped to 0.96 points last month from 0.98 a month earlier, marginally below the neutral threshold.
The nation is home to the world’s largest contract makers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電).
The coincident index, used to reflect the nation’s current economic condition, inched up 0.8 percent to 105.9 last month because of continued improvement in non-farm employment as well as wholesale, retail and food services, the report said.
However, the indices on real -customs-cleared exports and imports of machineries and electrical equipment registered negative -cyclical movements, the report said.
Wu Ming-hui (吳明蕙), an analyst at the CEPD, said the council remains cautiously optimistic about the economic outlook as the nation’s GDP is forecast to expand by about 4.5 percent next year from this year, according to estimates.
The economy is expected to grow 4.51 percent next year from this year, the Directorate-General of Accounting, Budget and Statistics predicted last month, lower than the 4.71 percent forecast by Academia Sinica, the 4.62 percent forecast by Polaris Research Institute (寶華綜合經濟研究院) and the 4.55 forecast by the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (中經院).
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