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."
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said that its investment plan in Arizona is going according to schedule, following a local media report claiming that the company is planning to break ground on its third wafer fab in the US in June. In a statement, TSMC said it does not comment on market speculation, but that its investments in Arizona are proceeding well. TSMC is investing more than US$65 billion in Arizona to build three advanced wafer fabs. The first one has started production using the 4-nanometer (nm) process, while the second one would start mass production using the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
RSS