Taiwan set to leap past fellow Asian tigers for 4th straight quarter

Taipei

TAIWAN is poised to race ahead of its fellow Asian tigers for the fourth straight quarter, as consumers loosen purse strings and companies churn out new iPhones.

The island is forecast to report first-quarter economic growth of 3.5 per cent on Thursday, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, at least one percentage point more than South Korea and Singapore and the projection for Hong Kong. Such outperformance has driven the currency to the top of Asia this year and the benchmark equity index to about 10,000 for the first time in 15 years.