Director of the government statistics office Shih Su-mei says that it will be difficult for Taiwan to maintain 1% GDP growth this year.
Shih was speaking at the Legislature on Thursday. Shih said that Taiwan’s export saw a negative growth of 12% in July and nearly 15% in August. Meanwhile, orders for Taiwanese goods saw negative growth of 5% in July and 8.3% in August.
Shih said that with this poor performance in July and August and with predictions of third quarter growth at only 0.1%, Taiwan’s GDP growth will struggle to reach 1% this year. However, in response to one KMT lawmaker’s question, Shih said that negative GDP growth remains unlikely.