DGBAS lowers GDP growth forecast

UNDERESTIMATED: The agency said that as its previous forecast was guided by the SARS crisis, it did not adequately account for disruptions caused by the pandemic

Taipei Times
Date: May 29, 2020
By: Crystal Hsu / Staff reporter

The nation’s economy might grow just 1.67 percent this year squarely on the back of government expenditure and private investment, as exports and consumer spending have stalled, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.

The forecast is a sizeable retreat from an estimate of 2.37 percent growth made in February before the COVID-19 outbreaks became a pandemic.

“The previous forecast was guided by the SARS crisis in 2003 and therefore underestimated the ongoing pandemic, which is hitting economic activity hard at home and abroad,” DGBAS Minister Chu Tzer-ming (朱澤民) told a media briefing in Taipei.

A Taipei construction site is pictured with Taipei 101 in the background. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics yesterday revised its annual GDP growth forecast to 1.67 percent, down 0.7 percentage points from the forecast it made in February.

Photo: CNA

The agency now expects exports and consumer spending to fall into the negative for the whole year, with declines of 0.7 percent and 0.12 percent, reversing projected growth of 2.85 percent and 1.58 percent respectively.    [FULL  STORY]