Taipei Times
Date: Feb 02, 2019
By: Crystal Hsu  /  Staff reporter

The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) fell to 47.9 last month in the third consecutive monthly contraction as firms held off on purchases ahead of the Lunar New Year, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday.

That meant a further deterioration in the operating conditions for the manufacturing industry at the start of the year, which might not improve in the coming few months, the think tank said.

“Firms are generally conservative about business in the first half of this year, but are looking at improvement in the second half,” CIER president Chen Shi-kuan (陳思寬) told a news conference.

The index gauges the health of the local manufacturing industry, with values larger than 50 indicating expansion and lower than that suggesting contraction.    [FULL  STORY]