TAIPEI: Taiwan’s composite economic monitoring indicator compiled by the National Development Council (NDC) flashed a blue light in June, indicating that the economy was showing signs of a recession.
The overall score decreased by two points in June from a month earlier, slipping into the blue light range of 9-16 points, the NDC said in a statement released here the other day.
The NDC employs a five-color rating system to monitor Taiwan’s economic performance.
In addition to the blue light (9-16 points), a yellow-blue light (17-22) represents an economic slump, a green light (23-31) points to stable growth, a yellow-red (32-37) shows the economy is heating up, and a red light (38-45) means the economy is overheated.
Among the nine constituents of the monitoring indicator, the scores for imports of machinery and electrical equipment and the manufacturing sector composite indicator each fell one point to fall from green to yellow-blue, and drag the composite index down.
The light signal for the other seven constituents — monetary aggregate M1B, the Taiex’s average closing level, the industrial production index, the manufacturing sales index, nonagricultural employment, customs-cleared exports, and trade and food services sales — remained unchanged.
The trend-adjusted leading index, which is used as an indicator of the country’s economic performance over the next six months, fell for the 15th consecutive month in June by 0.31 points from a month earlier to 98.13.
The trend-adjusted coincident index fell for the eighth consecutive month, dropping 0.97 points in May to 97.22, and the trend-adjusted lagging index was 101.65 in June, up 0.24 point from May.
Although the leading index and coincident index for June declined, they fell at a slower pace, said Wu Ming-hui , director of the NDC’s Department of Economic Development.
She said that she still had a cautiously optimistic outlook for Taiwan’s economy for the rest of the year.
