The government’s business climate monitor returned to “yellow-blue” in January as the pace of the economic slowdown eased, likely due to a front-loading effect, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday.
The business climate gained four points to 20, thanks to better readings on imports of capital equipment, as well as retail and restaurant sales, the council said.
“It is premature to talk about a recovery, as the improvement was likely caused by the front-loading typically seen ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday,” NDC research director Wu Ming-huei (吳明蕙) told a media briefing.
Against that backdrop, the government should remain conservative, and closely watch economic developments at home and abroad, Wu said.
In January, the sub-indices on the M1B narrow monetary measure, imports of electrical and machinery equipment, and wholesale, retail and restaurant sales gained value, while other constituents remained unchanged.
The council uses a five-color system to describe the state of the domestic economy, with “green” indicating steady growth, “red” suggesting overheating and “blue” signaling a recession. Dual colors indicate a transition.
The monitor was “blue” in December last year for the first time in 33 months, raising concern that the nation’s export-reliant economy might bear the brunt of the tariff dispute between the US and China.
More than 50 percent of Taiwan’s exports are sent to the two nations.
The leading index series, which predicts the economic picture for the next six months, declined 0.56 percent to 98.69 in January, falling for the eighth consecutive month, a council report showed.
Data on export orders, stock prices, corporate confidence and floor space in new construction projects continued to show negative cyclical movements, it found.
The coincident index series, which reflects current economic trends, dropped 0.48 percent to 98.48, weakening for the 13th straight month, the report showed.
The readings on industrial production, electricity use and non-farm employment declined further from December last year, it said.
The government is to introduce new subsidies for domestic travel next month in an attempt to boost private consumption, Wu said.
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
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
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
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS