Press Release
National Development Council (NDC)
March 27, 2014
In February 2014, the Taiwan Business Indicators showed that the economy continued its recovery. Among the indicators compiled by the National Development Council (NDC), the trend-adjusted leading index increased by 0.19%, the trend-adjusted coincident index increased by 0.30% from the previous month, and the overall monitoring indicator returned to flash the "green" signal.
1. Leading Indicators: With revised data, the composite leading index stood at 104.53, up by 0.31% from January 2014. Its trend-adjusted index increased by 0.19% to 101.35. Among the seven indicators making up the trend-adjusted index, net accession rate of employees on payrolls of industry and services, the TIER manufacturing sector composite indicator, building permits, TAIEX average closing price, and real monetary aggregates M1B had positive cyclical movements from the previous month, while the index of export orders and SEMI book-to-bill ratio had negative cyclical movements.
2. Coincident Indicators: With revised data, the coincident index stood at 104.17, up by 0.43% from January 2014. Its trend-adjusted index increased by 0.30% to 101.00. Among the seven indicators making up the trend-adjusted index, the index of producer’s shipment for manufacturing, electric power consumption, the industrial production index, sales of trade and food services, real customs-cleared exports, and nonagricultural employment had positive cyclical movements from the previous month, while real machineries and electrical equipments imports had negative cyclical movements.
3. Lagging Indicators: With revised data, the lagging index stood at 100.00, down by 0.42% from January 2014. Its trend-adjusted index decreased by 0.55% to 96.96. Among the six indicators making up the trend-adjusted index, the unemployment rate(inverted) had positive cyclical movement from the previous month, while the manufacturing unit output labor cost index, the inventories to sales ratio for manufacturing, loans and investments of monetary financial institutions, regular employees on payrolls in industry and services, and the interbank overnight call-loan rate had negative cyclical movements.
4. The Monitoring Indicators: The total score in February 2014 increased by three points to 25, flashing the “green” signal. Among the nine components, the industrial production index and the customs-cleared exports changed its individual light signal from “yellow-blue” to “green”, each gained one point, the index of producer’s shipment for manufacturing gained two points to change its individual light signal from “blue” to “green”, while the imports of machineries and electrical equipments lost one point to change its individual light signal form “green” to “yellow-blue”. The light signal for the rest of five components remained unchanged.
~~ The next release is scheduled for April 28 2014 ~