MIXED PICTURE: While suppliers of chemical and steel products were more optimistic than their peers, most companies in the service sector expressed a neutral outlook
Taipei Times
Date: Nov 26, 2020
By: Crystal Hsu / Staff reporter
Workers assemble bikes at a factory in Changhua County on Aug. 14. Business sentiment among local firms last month diverged, but manufacturers gained better confidence about their outlook, the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research said.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
The sentiment gauge for the manufacturing industry was 101.27 last month, up 0.81 points from a revised 100.46 in September, increasing for six months in a row to the highest level since August 2018.
Manufacturers with positive views about business prospects increased 7.5 percentage points to 25.6 percent, while companies with a negative outlook dropped 3.6 percentage points to 21.3 percent, the monthly survey published yesterday showed.
Suppliers of chemical and steel products are more optimistic than their peers in other sectors, benefiting from infrastructure construction projects, the institute’s economic forecasting center director Gordon Sun (孫明德) said. [FULL STORY]
