Taoyuan Nights

Some good news:
In my previous posts, I’ve referred to published articles which state that Taiwan’s exports are almost 70% of GDP. However, recently I noticed other articles, particularly one from the UN, that say that exports are only 50% of Taiwan’s GDP. If this latter figure is correct, then the more-than-halving of exports we saw [...]

There’s so much bad news going around just now…
Taiwan Export Orders Fall 22%, Fifth Monthly Decline
Wage declines thwarting economic efforts: analysts
TSMC is restoring regular hours.. but only after getting rid of 1000 employees!
Taiwan giveth and Taiwan taketh away…after encouraging people to spend, new laws will lead to a sharp cut in consumer lending.

Suicides rising [...]

Take a look at this report in the Taipei Times today.
To summarise:

Basic unemployment has risen to the highest level ever recorded in Taiwan: 5.6%.
If you factor in the ‘fake jobs’ recently added to hide unemployment, the level is 6.1%.
If you factor in the people who’ve simply given up looking for a job, [...]

The year-on-year figures are flattening out, month-by-month. Instead of ‘50% down year-on-year’ as was the case in January, Taiwan’s exports are now only appearing to be only 20-30% down in recent months, which would point towards a shallower drop in GDP of only 10-15% rather than the gob-smacking 30%+ drop I referred to in earlier [...]

The Register reports a slight improvement in the situation for Taiwanese tech businesses:
“According to a series of reports from Taiwanese industry-watcher DigiTimes, orders are piling up at some tech companies, and forecasts of future sales are looking far rosier than during the hideous last three months of 2008.
Semiconductor designers, for example, are feeling downright perky. [...]

Economic news
“Kilbinder Dosanjh, a senior economist at The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), said Taiwan’s unemployment rate would surge to 10 percent by the end of the year, the Central News Agency reported on Feb. 21. ” (Taipei Times)
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2009/03/09/2003437986

“if Taiwan were to employ the US calculation method, its economic growth rate for the last quarter of [...]

A nice article today in the Taipei Times…
“If the US were to employ Taiwan’s calculation method, its economy would be reported as having contracted only 0.82 percent year-on-year in the last quarter of last year, which fails to represent the seriousness of the situation.
Such a slight contraction could hardly reflect the serious decline that actually [...]

I keep telling people that Taiwan may be due for one of the biggest economic shocks of its history – indeed, perhaps one of the biggest economic shocks in world history – and that the idea of a little 3% drop in GDP over the year is not merely laughable, but insanely absurd.
But few [...]