Taiwan’s economy maintained steady momentum last month, with the government’s business climate monitor flashing a “green” light for the third consecutive month, signaling stable expansion despite rising external risks, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday.
The gauge printed 29 last month without change in any of its nine components, underscoring the economy’s resilience even in the absence of growth drivers, the council said.
“As long as artificial intelligence demand remains strong, the state would be sustainable in the second half of this year even after the US imposes a 20 percent tariff on goods from Taiwan,” NDC Department of Economic Development Deputy Director Chen Mei-chu (陳美菊) said at a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: CNA
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics earlier this month lifted its forecast for GDP growth this year to 4.45 percent from the 3.1 percent forecast in May, citing stronger exports of chips and related products.
The latest data showed that private consumption and the labor market are still holding up, although traditional and non-tech industries continue to face headwinds, Chen said.
The council’s leading index,, which seeks to project the economic state over the next six months, pointed to softer momentum ahead, printing 98.6, down 0.7 percent from one month earlier.
The retreat stemmed from weaker export orders, business sentiment and construction activity, the council said.
In contrast, the coincident index, a measure of current conditions, climbed 0.28 percent to 106.2, marking its 27th straight month of gains on the back of robust exports, electricity consumption, manufacturing sales, industrial output and imports of capital equipment, it said
Overall, local businesses remain wary of the global trade environment, especially Washington’s planned tariffs on semiconductors, Chen said.
Many companies have diversified their global investment footprints. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s top contract chipmaker and a critical supplier to Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp, has expanded its capacity in the US to minimize tariff exposure.
As long as global artificial intelligence demand stays robust, Taiwan is expected to maintain its pivotal role in the supply chain, she said.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS