The nation’s manufacturers and service providers expect business to improve in the second half of this year after reporting lackluster sales and profits in the first half due to the COVID-19 pandemic and global inflation, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday.
The Taipei-based institute said that 57.1 percent of manufacturers expect business to improve, while the rate was 58.7 percent for non-manufacturing companies.
The results of the twice-yearly survey came after the official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index disappointed by shedding 13.9 points for the past six months to 46.7, slipping into contraction territory, it said.
The profitability measure