Taiwan¡¯s economy grew at its fastest since 1987, overcoming disruptions caused by the war in Iran as the island continues to ride demand for its tech products supporting the build-out of artificial intelligence computing.
Gross domestic product expanded almost 13.7% in the first quarter from a year earlier, compared with about 12.7% in the previous three months, according to a statement by the statistics bureau in Taipei on Thursday. That exceeded all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists, whose median was for a slowdown to 11.3%.
The statistics bureau attributed the better-than-expected figure to surprisingly strong exports, investment and private consumption. Domestic demand contributed slightly more than 4 percentage points to last quarter¡¯s growth, with its share climbing to the highest in a year.
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