TAI PEI: Taiwan’s economy flashed a “yellow-blue” light in December, signaling sluggish growth, but the steady rise of an index of leading indicators showed the economy was still headed in the right direction, the National Development Council (NDC) said Friday. The NDC said the composite index of monitoring indicators for December fell one point from November to 22, the high end of the 17 to 22 range for the yellow-blue light. The index had previously flashed three “green” lights in a row, representing steady growth. It originally recorded a 22 in November, but was revised upward by one point to 23 to fall within the green light range on revised data for sales in the manufacturing sector.
The NDC uses a five-color system to gauge the country’s economic performance, with blue indicating economic recession, yellow-blue representing economic sluggishness, green denoting stable growth, yellow-red referring to a warming economy and red pointing to economic overheating.
Wu Ming-hui head of the NDC’s Department of Economic Development, said the latest data showed that while Taiwan’s economy remained on the path to recovery, the pace of growth had slowed due to a relatively high base of comparison from the previous year. A stronger Taiwan dollar against the U.S. dollar also affected the December figure, Wu said. Though the index of monitoring indicators for December fell from a month earlier, Wu said, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the economic outlook for the upcoming six-month period, rose for the seventh straight month, suggesting that a recovery remained underway. Among the nine factors in the composite monitoring index, only three improved from a month earlier — industrial production, revenue in the wholesale, retail and food/beverage sectors, and sales generated by the manufacturing sector, NDC data showed.
The other factors — money supply, stock prices, employment in the non-farm sector, exports, imports of machinery and electrical equipment, and business sentiment in the manufacturing sector — all remained unchanged or slid in December, the data showed.
According to the NDC, the sub-indexes for the money supply, industrial production, employment, manufacturing sales, and revenue in the wholesale, retail and food beverage sectors continued to flash a yellow-blue light in December.
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