Ma made the remarks when receiving a group of foreign business representatives at the Presidential Office recently.

Ma said as the global economic recession lingers as a result of the U.S. subprime mortgage market upheavals, Taiwan’s economic development prospects may remain lackluster for as long as one year.

“Nevertheless, we should work hard to create opportunities to advance amid the unfavorable situation,” Ma said.

This is the first time Ma expressed the island’s economic future to be so bright since he assumed the presidency on May 20.

In an earlier interview with a magazine, Ma said Taiwan’s economy is likely to see a 4.8 percent growth this year despite the impacts of spiraling international oil prices and commodity price fluctuations.

The president noted Taiwan’s economy would gradually turn for the better as a result of the gradual decline and stabilization of international oil prices and domestic commodity prices.

During the presidential election campaigns, Ma pledged to achieve an average annual economic growth rate at 6 percent if he’s elected. But just 100 days after Ma took office, a spate of “bad news” has emerged.

One of them was that the island’s economic monitoring indicator for July flashed the first blue light, which indicates a recession, in five years.

Another undesirable piece of news was that the annual growth of export orders received in July from mainland China plunged to only 1.73 percent from a regular double-digit growth seen in the past years. Furthermore, Taiwan’s foreign trade also experienced a rare trade deficit in July.

All these unfavorable phenomena made the Cabinet-level Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics to revise downward its projection of Taiwan’s economic growth rate to 4.03 percent.

Some foreign institutional investors have even lowered their forecasts on the island’s economic expansion rate to the range of 3.5 percent to 3.9 percent this year.

In fact, the downward adjustment came in line with a similar move by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In July, the IMF still optimistically projected the global economic growth at 4.1 percent for this year, but it just reduced the projection to 3.9 percent in late August.

For 2009, the IMF also revised downward its global economic growth projection to 3.7 percent from an original estimate of 3.9 percent.

In terms of regional economies, the IMF still estimated the U.S. economic expansion rate at 1.3 percent for next year, but was pessimistic about the economic performance prospects of the European Union and Japan.

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