TAIPEI (TVBS News) — The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) on Tuesday (Oct. 31) lowered its estimation of Taiwan's third-quarter GDP growth to 2.32%, a decrease of 0.22 percentage points from its August forecast of 2.54%.
The DGBAS revealed the leading cause for the downward revision is a slowdown in private capital formation, including government and public enterprises' fixed investments and stock changes, which significantly underperformed expectations.
DGBAS official Wang Tsui-hua highlighted Taiwan's economy is still improving as shown by the third-quarter GDP growth on a seasonally adjusted annual rate (saar) of 10.47%.
If fourth-quarter forecasts are maintained, this year's GDP will be revised downward to 1.55%, Wang shared.
In terms of domestic demand, third-quarter private consumption recorded a real growth of 8.9%, an upward revision of 0.56 percentage points, contributing 3.98 percentage points to the economic growth.
The key driver for growth remains service consumption, the DGBAS official noted.