News Briefing

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on January 1 that a third of the economies around the world will suffer from recession in 2023. Since the three major economies, the US, EU, and mainland China are expected to experience a slowdown, this year (the year 2023) is going to be an "even more difficult" one than that of 2022.
 

Impact Analysis

With the impacts of the Russo-Ukrainian war, soaring inflation, and a severe epidemic in mainland China, the global economy has been critically impaired. Besides, the EU has been seriously trapped in the quagmire of the Russo-Ukraine war, and that’s why IMF has predicted that one-third of the EU member states will fall into an economic recession in 2023. As for mainland China, the economic development in mainland China at the end of last year had shown a weak trend due to the sharp turn of official policies rendered with the rapid spread of the epidemic, so both the PMI and the real estate indexes have persistently displayed an economic slump. IMF believes that mainland China will, for the first time in history, “encumber” the growth of global economics. In the United States, as the labor market is performing vigorously at present, the overall economic resilience remains strong, helping the market to avoid going into a recession. However,  it would still have to confront high inflation pressures.

Being an export-oriented economy, Taiwan is an important global supply center for semiconductors and electronic components. As such, some manufacturers may be able to reap the benefits of order transfer as of geopolitical effects. Nevertheless, there’s not much leisure and luxury for us in Taiwan to be able to soak in optimism, given the severe macro-environment as a whole. For the PCB industry of Taiwan, the party of growth brought about by the boom of the semiconductor industry and the demands created in response to the epidemic has already ended. What comes next should be a return to the growth level before the epidemic. It’s estimated that consumer products, i.e., mobile phones and personal computers, will continue to shrink, so, the growth momentum of the trade in 2023 will have to rely on the drive from some high-end products (i.e., substrates, servers, and automotive electronics) and emerging applications (i.e., low-orbit satellites, and Mini LEDs).