TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s economy grew last year at its fastest pace in more than a decade, driven by a surge in tech exports during the COVID-19 pandemic to support a trend of people working and studying from home, as well as global demand for chips.
For 2021, initial gross domestic product (GDP) growth was put at 6.28%, compared with 3.11% the previous year, preliminary data from the statistics agency showed on Thursday.
That was the fastest pace since an expansion of 10.25% in 2010.
GDP grew a preliminary 4.88% in the fourth quarter of 2021 from a year earlier after a rise of 3.7% in the period from July to September. That was well above the increase of 3.8% forecast in a Reuters poll.
However, it lagged growth of 7.43% in the second quarter and 8.92% in the first quarter.
As a key hub in the global technology supply chain for giants such as Apple Inc, Taiwan’s economy has outperformed many regional peers during the pandemic as it benefited from robust demand for tech exports as more people turned to working and studying from home.
Taiwan’s exports rose 29.4% in 2021 to a record high, and the economy continues to benefit from strong global demand for its high-tech goods and chips.
Total fourth-quarter exports soared 26.01% on the year in U.S. dollar terms, the agency said.
(Reporting by Jeanny Kao and Meg Shen; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Toby Chopra and Clarence Fernandez)
