Forward-looking‧Professional‧International 
December 2022  
End market demands continue to shrink due to major central banks’ rate-hiking measures
TIER’s manufacturing and service composite indicators rallied in November
The end market demands of the US and Europe have continued to shrink, since the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and European Central Bank (ECB) both conducted tightening monetary operations with unprecedented rate-hiking measures to cope with inflation. Despite of the fact that the Fed and the ECB did slow down the pace of interest rate hikes in December, both of them simultaneously revised down the economic growth performance in 2023. Nevertheless, global inflationary pressures are still high, so the central banks of various countries will maintain a positive policy stance, trying to contain inflation. Declining end demands would certainly hinder the operation of global value chains (GVCs), whereas Taiwan is an important part of GVCs. The impacts have been on Taiwan’s exports as a result. However, the manufacturing and service composite indicators issued by the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) rallied in November 2022 showing a dim light at the end of the tunnel. Nevertheless, TIER’s construction composite indicator continued to drop because of slowing GDP growth, higher mortgage rate, and government policies aiming to further cool off the domestic housing market. ...Read more
Taiwan's leading 5G carriers put to the speed test
Opensignal, an international evaluator of mobile networks has announced a list of winners in its recently published "Taiwan 5G User Experience Report." The report investigated download speed, upload speed, audiovisual and gaming experience for four major Taiwanese 5G telecom operators. The clear-cut winner was Chunghwa Telecom, which dominated "5G download speed" and "5G upload speed," two segments garnering the most consumer attention. Chunghwa Telecom won four major speed awards in one fell swoop. This achievement makes Chunghwa Telecom the only domestic telecom carrier to win 5G network speed crowns certified by two leading international evaluators, Speedtest and Opensignal. As for overall performance, Opensignal awarded "Excellent Quality Consistency" to Taiwan Mobile. Users rated the carrier best for watching audio and video, as well as group audio and video conferences, and applications with lower bandwidth speed requirements, such as web browsing (Source: Taiwan News).

U.S. dollar closes higher on Taipei forex market (Source: Focus Taiwan).
TSMC to begin 3nm mass production (Source: Taipei Times).
Taiwan Economic Research Monthly
Discovering the future challenges of corporate evaluation from the perspective of ESG
Under widespread media reports from various countries, the positive benefits of corporate ESG practice are widely known, prompting more corporate organizations to join the ranks of ESG practice, and with the launch of the sustainable rating mechanism and various ESG funds, it has also become a mainstream investment theory. In order to grasp the problems and challenges faced in promoting ESG, this article discusses the transmission channels of ESG ratings and stock prices from the perspective of corporate evaluation, introduces the ESG rating structure and evaluation items, and further discusses the reliability and consistency of ESG rating results of various institutions. The reasons that affect the quality of ESG ratings can be used as a reference for improving ESG evaluation methods or policy system design in the future.
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