With higher oil prices looming and the nation's export momentum weakening, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd maintained its forecast for Taiwan's economic growth for this year at 4 percent, the bank said yesterday.
Interest rates will rise steadily to curb inflation and prevent a South Korean-style, boom-and-bust consumption cycle, said Tai Hui (
Low interest rates in 2002 and 2003 prompted South Koreans to boost their consumption. The resulting huge debts dragged down the nation's economy last year, a slump Seoul is still working to remedy, he said.
Hui predicted that Taiwan's central bank will raise benchmark interest rates by a total of less than 1 percentage point this year to bring the current "negative" real interest rates -- interest rates minus the rate of inflation -- back to a normal level.
On March 24, the central bank announced it would hike the rediscount rate to 1.875 percent, while boosting the secured accommodations rate and the unsecured loan rate to 2.25 percent and 4.125 percent, respectively.
Standard Chartered predicted that the NT dollar will remain stable against the greenback, fluctuating between NT$31.3 and NT$31.8 to the US dollar.
The NT dollar finished at NT$31.513 on the Taipei foreign exchange market yesterday.
Steady domestic demand and strong government spending will provide growth impetus, Hui said but the soft patch in the semiconductor industry and volatile oil prices are negative factors.
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (
The price of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips fell 25 percent in the first quarter to below US$3 per unit, the company said.
"Taiwan will need strong consumption and investment to prop up growth momentum," Hui said. "Political factors or cross-strait policies would not cause any impact as the public has become accustomed to such variations."
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS