One of Taiwan’s leading think tanks, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER), has slashed its forecast for the country's gross domestic product (GDP) growth for 2015.
The think tank on Thursday cut its earlier estimate of 3.04 % growth down to 0.9% for the year. That makes it the first think tank to cut its projections for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to less than one percent.
CIER President Wu Chung-shu says that the global trade in merchandise had slowed in the third quarter. And that, in turn, impacted Taiwan’s exports, a mainstay of the local economy.
“The third quarter saw the economy slow by quite a big margin, with a double-digit declines in export figures," said Wu, "we saw that in the third quarter the economy contracted by 2.11% . It’s expected to rise slightly in the fourth quarter, by 1.57%, for an annual growth rate of 0.9%.”
CIER is projecting Taiwan’s economic growth for next year to be around 2.27%. Wu said that it will be difficult for countries to produce exceptional growth figures though, with countries like the US, Japan and China all failing to show clear signs of a recovery.
However, Deputy Finance Minister Wu Tang-chieh found reason for optimism. He said that with this year’s economic growth projection at 0.9%, there was a chance that it could be kept above 1% for the year.