Taiwan’s chief executive officers have rosy views of the global economy this year and are looking to increase revenue at their firms, despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as foreign exchange volatility, an annual survey released yesterday by the local branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) showed.
Fifty-six percent of the CEOs are looking at global GDP growth in the next 12 months, the highest since PwC Taiwan launched the survey in 2012, it said.
“Local firms have arrived at the need to maintain normal operations before the world can recover from the public health crisis,” PwC Taiwan chairman Joseph Chou (周建宏) said.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA-EFE
CEOs of financial service providers were the most sanguine, followed by those at industrial manufacturers and automakers, PwC found in the interviews of 234 business leaders from October to December last year.
About 21 percent expressed a high degree of confidence in revenue improvement this year, while 25 to 32 percent said they were highly confident about business outlook in the coming three years, it found.
Taiwan’s effective control of its COVID-19 outbreak, corporate upgrades and companies shifting their production bases home from abroad contribute to the positive sentiment, it said.
Suppliers of auto parts have the greatest confidence in business growth in the medium and long term, it found.
THREATS
Virus infections and currency volatility tied for first place as the biggest threat after 38 percent of the CEOs named them as the top challenge ahead, followed by trade conflicts at 31 percent, geopolitical tensions at 30 percent and political uncertainty at 24 percent, it said.
Ongoing global capital inflows have pushed up the local currency and eroded corporate profitability at companies that are doing business in US-dollar terms, the survey said, advising exporters to take the issue seriously by adopting mechanisms to rein in foreign exchange losses.
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