The government’s business climate monitor last month remained “green” for the third consecutive month, indicating that the economy continues to show signs of healthy expansion, even though some barometers slowed, the National Development Council said yesterday.
The council uses a five-color system to reflect the state of the economy, with “green” indicating steady growth and “red” suggesting overheating, while “blue” signals a recession. Dual-color signals mean the economy is changing gears.
The total score for major economic bellwethers last month shed 5 points to 23 and the council dismissed the worry that the economy has lost steam, the council’s report showed.
A STABLE COURSE
Among the nine sub-indices, producer shipments, industrial output, business confidence and wholesale and retail sales lost points, but the remaining five indicators remained unchanged, it said.
“Some steelmakers closed last month to carry out annual maintenance, which weakened industrial output,” National Development Council Director Wu Ming-huei (吳明蕙) told reporters.
Purchasing activity and other indicators are staying in expansion mode, and the council has not spotted signs of an economic turnaround, Wu said.
The observation is consistent with that of the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, which on Friday last week raised its growth forecast for both this year and next year due to stronger exports and consumer spending.
The nation’s export-focused economy would receive further support from an increase in global trade, Wu said.
The growing popularity of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things might spur demand for new technology and bolster demand for semiconductors, economists have said.
Taiwan is home to the world’s largest contract chipmakers with semiconductor shipments driving 30 percent of exports.
The government has sought to bolster private investment by easing regulatory obstacles and residency requirements for foreign professionals, the council said.
The index of leading indicators, which looks ahead to the coming six months, expanded 0.26 percent to 101.58 last month, increasing for the fifth month in a row, the council said.
Of the seven components, only imports of semiconductor capital equipment and net payroll gains slipped, its monthly report indicated.
‘CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM’
“The results merit cautious optimism,” Wu said.
The council’s index of coincident indicators, which reflects the current economic status, grew 0.5 percent to 102.89, as six of the seven sub-indices posed positive cyclical movements, the report said.
Meanwhile, the lagging indicators rose 0.11 percent to 99.9 last month, it said.
Except for manufacturing inventory, the jobless rate, payrolls in industry and services, loans and investment by financial institutions, and interbank overnight rates, all indicators registered a pickup in steam, the council said.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
RSS