Over 3,700 Taiwanese factories closed in the eight months to August -- up 31 percent from a year earlier -- as the economy turned sharply for the worse, the Ministry of Economics Affairs said yesterday.
The number of factories shut down in the January-August period surged 885 year-on-year to 3,711, but the actual number of factories closing was likely greater because many firms had not registered with the government, the ministry said.
"More plants will be forced to shut down in the coming months as the export-driven economy is expected to deteriorate further in the face of steeper falls in US demand after the terrorist attacks," a ministry official said.
But the ministry official declined to predict whether the number of plant closures would reach 6,000 this year -- up from 5,000 last year -- as local media has reported.
Economic activity in Taiwan had already suffered its biggest quarterly contraction in 26 years of 2.35 percent year-on-year in the three months to June, according to the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.
Growth is expected to slow over the full year by 0.37 percent from an earlier Directorate General' estimate of 4.02 percent, the first annual contraction since measures of economic performance were introduced.
But unidentified sources at the Directorate General told a Chinese language newspaper earlier this week that the economy could contract more than 1 percent this year, with both the US tragedy and Typhoon Nari-related damage factored in.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
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