The nation’s economic outlook remained bleak after the government’s business monitoring system flashed “blue” for the fourth consecutive month last month, the National Development Council said yesterday.
The overall score remained unchanged on 14 points.
The nine business gauges making up the business monitoring system saw across-the-board declines last month, dragged by weak industrial output and commercial sales, the council said.
The exception was M1B money supply, which improved from “yellow-blue” to “green,” indicating a slight uptick for the financial sector, the council said.
The M1B reading, which includes cash and cash equivalents, last month increased 6.6 percent on a year-on-year basis, compared with 5.9 percent in August.
Looking ahead, the council expects the year-end shopping season to help boost the nation’s languishing exports.
Citing US-based research institute Global Insights, the council said many uncertainties remain a drag on the nation’s exports.
Concerns include the glut of consumer electronics inventories and diminished consumption by the public amid a bleak economic outlook, the council said.
Against that backdrop, consumer confidence dipped again this month, marking the sixth consecutive month of decline, amid rising concerns over consumer prices and dismal employment prospects, a survey by National Central University showed.
The Consumer Confidence Index, a monthly survey by National Central University, logged 84.6 this month, falling 0.72 points from 85.32 last month, dragged down by an across-the-board tumble in all of its six sub-indices.
The sub-index gauging sentiment over consumer prices in the next six months saw the steepest decline this month, dropping 1.9 points to 57.3. However, the figure was 12.1 points higher than a year earlier.
Typhoons have driven up food prices, particularly vegetables, and the sharp decline in the sub-index reflects consumers’ sensitivity to higher costs of grocery and household goods, said Dachrahn Wu (吳大任), director of the university’s Research Center for Taiwan Economic Development, which conducted the survey.
The sub-index measuring investment sentiment saw the second-sharpest decline, falling 0.7 points to 72.5, the survey showed.
Investment has stabilized after the National Financial Stabilization Fund was activated in August, Wu said.
The sub-index on purchasing durable goods, which is widely regarded as an indicator for the housing market, this month registered 102.05, ending four consecutive months of decline.
However, as the figure has held above 100 for the 25th consecutive month, the outcome suggests that the public has not yet turned pessimistic on the housing market, the survey showed.
A spike in the number of workers on unpaid leave sent the sub-index on jobseeker confidence down 0.55 points to 112.65, the survey showed.
Scores above 100 indicate optimism, while values below that suggest pessimism.
Taiwan’s technology protection rules prohibits Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) from producing 2-nanometer chips abroad, so the company must keep its most cutting-edge technology at home, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks in response to concerns that TSMC might be forced to produce advanced 2-nanometer chips at its fabs in Arizona ahead of schedule after former US president Donald Trump was re-elected as the next US president on Tuesday. “Since Taiwan has related regulations to protect its own technologies, TSMC cannot produce 2-nanometer chips overseas currently,” Kuo said at a meeting of the legislature’s
GEOPOLITICAL ISSUES? The economics ministry said that political factors should not affect supply chains linking global satellite firms and Taiwanese manufacturers Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) asked Taiwanese suppliers to transfer manufacturing out of Taiwan, leading to some relocating portions of their supply chain, according to sources employed by and close to the equipment makers and corporate documents. A source at a company that is one of the numerous subcontractors that provide components for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet products said that SpaceX asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan because of geopolitical risks, pushing at least one to move production to Vietnam. A second source who collaborates with Taiwanese satellite component makers in the nation said that suppliers were directly
Top Taiwanese officials yesterday moved to ease concern about the potential fallout of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, making a case that the technology restrictions promised by the former US president against China would outweigh the risks to the island. The prospect of Trump’s victory in this week’s election is a worry for Taipei given the Republican nominee in the past cast doubt over the US commitment to defend it from Beijing. But other policies championed by Trump toward China hold some appeal for Taiwan. National Development Council Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) described the proposed technology curbs as potentially having
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list