Thursday, July 26, 2007

How Bad is Taiwan's Economy?

Recently an Economist in NATPA asked "How bad is Taiwan's Economy?, All data show Taiwan economy is good, GDP is 4/1% and stock is up in near 10,000 mark. Why you people complain?"

The response came from a well know industrialist in Northern California. Here are his comments:

The economic of Taiwan is as good as any advanced country with the same problem but different expectation. The problem is job loss, income loss, & uneven distribution of wealth. Even most of the companies are making money, the jobs can be lost. In our Silicon Valley here in California, we lost 150,000 jobs since 2000 from 1,000,000 jobs to 850,000 jobs. The companies are still making a lot of money. Intel just laid off 10,000 and HP laid off 20,000 in a year or two.

For Taiwan, the reality she facing are:

1. Companies are making good money;

2. Jobs were lost to China;

3. Money were moved to China.

In Taiwan, those companies making good in the stock markets are owned by foreign investors. TSMC and Hong-Hi are all more than 60% owned by foreign investors. In US, 50% of the stocks is owned by 2% owners. The same should be expected in Taiwan. What that means is most the stocks are owned only by a small group of people. So the stock price doesn't represent every citizens wealth, and it does not even the wealth of Taiwan.

The government should not use stock's price as a main indicator of economy but they has to pay attention to the job creation, income improvement for most of people, and improvements for investment environment like tax incentive, government efficiency, law consistency and legal justice.

The Taiwan's economy is good but the expectation is high, sometimes too high. Check CIA's country information, Taiwan's GDP/PPP is about US$28,000. Compared with Korea, $20,000, China $5,000 and USA $40,000.

GDP/PPP represents the real living standard, not just the exchange rate. For comparison, GDP of China is $1,700, Korea, $16,000, and Taiwan is $15,000. This is where they said Korea is doing better than Taiwan. If Taiwan economic index takes the personal income in China and investment income in China, it will be far far better. But the loss of jobs and loss of income for a lot of people in Taiwan is real.


1 comment:

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