Academia Sinica Slightly Raises Taiwan's 2014 GDP Growth to 3.3%

Seeing better-than-expected economic performance in the first half (H1) of the year, the Institute of Economics of Academia Sinica, Taiwan's highest academic body, lately raised its prediction on Taiwan's GDP growth this year to 3.31%, up 0.42 of a percentage point from that at the end of 2013.

Academia Sinica believes that the island's promising economic climate will continue into H2 due mainly to rising private consumption and external net demand, also forecasting the annual growth of real private consumption this year at 2.62%, up 0.63 of a percentage point from last year's 1.99% and that of product & service exports at 4.25% versus 4.23% in growth of such imports. The 2014 annual growth in trade surplus is expected to be 4.31%.

However government investment has been on a downward trend in the last three years with investment dropping to NT$320 billion (US$10.67 billion) in 2013 from 2011's NT$400 billion (US$13.33 billion). The corresponding value is predicted to further fall to NT$301.1 billion (US$10.04 billion) this year for a projected negative annual growth of 6.65%, with Academia Sinica having slightly lowered its forecast of annual growth in  private investment to 4.46% for the year.

Standard & Poor's, a U.S.-based rating agency, rates Taiwan's sovereignty and 2014 outlook AA-, also predicting the island's GDP growth at 3.5% for the year. (JL)

Predicted Taiwan's GDP Growth for 2014
Forecaster	Time of prediction	GDP growth (%)
Academia Sinica	July 2014	3.31
Taiwan Research Institute	June 2014	3.1
Yuanta-Polaris Research Institute	June 2014	3.18
Directorate General of Budget, Accounting & Statistics	May 2014	2.98
Taiwan Institute of Economic Research	April 2014	3.23
Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research	April 2014	3.05

Source: the said institutions