More manufacturers in Taiwan are cautious about business sentiment over the next six months, as the US government’s shutdown and debt ceiling woes last month affected global financial markets, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER, 台灣經濟研究院) said yesterday.
The Taipei-based think tank made the remark after announcing results of its latest survey, which found the business climate gauge for the manufacturing sector reached 97.67 points last month, down 1.11 points from the revised 98.78 points recorded in August.
In its monthly report, the institute said that 20.4 percent of local manufacturers polled last month were bearish about the next six months, up from the 19.7 percent in August, while respondents expressing bullish sentiment fell by 3.8 percentage points from a month earlier to 20.9 percent.
Only 25.3 percent of respondents said they were optimistic about their businesses last month, down 1.5 percentage points from 26.8 percent recorded in August, the report said.
The report also found that 41.1 percent of respondents were pessimistic about their businesses last month, an increase of 18.6 percentage points from 22.5 percent in August.
Gordon Sun (孫明德), director of the institute’s macroeconomic forecasting center, said the results showed business sentiment may still lack the strength this quarter, as the US fiscal problems offset positive drivers such as the economic recovery in China and Europe.
“In terms of export orders last month, most of the growth was led by information technology products, with other major sectors still in a downturn trend,” Sun said by telephone.
In the service sector, the business climate gauge stood at 93.63 points last month, down 1.6 points from 95.23 in August, the report showed.
In the construction sector, the business climate gauge dropped to 93.32 points last month, from the revised 95.1 points recorded in August.
The gauges in the manufacturing, service and construction sectors all showed the third straight monthly decline last month, an indication that economic sentiment in Taiwan has showed a downturn trend, Sun said.
Although sentiment this quarter may not be as optimistic as the market expected, Sun said the economy during the three-month period may remain flat even though the US congressional stalemate was temporarily resolved.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS