The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised its 2026 growth projection for Taiwan to 10.7%, more than double its April estimate of 5.2%, Focus Taiwan reported on October 13. The revision appeared in the fund's World Economic Outlook, released on October 12, and gives Taiwan the fastest expected expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.

The IMF now expects Taiwan to be the only economy in the world to record double-digit growth this year, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom continues. The fund said AI development is still concentrated in a small number of places. That applies both to the hardware needed to train and run AI models and to the work of building and operating frontier systems. Taiwan and South Korea together account for 62% of net trade in AI-related computing hardware, according to the IMF.

The IMF said "given the structure of supply chains for technology exports from these two economies, a handful of commodity exporters and other manufacturing hubs in East Asia are likely to see spillovers from this activity" according to Focus.

Elsewhere in the Asia region, the fund projects growth of 0.7% for Japan, 3.3% for South Korea, 3.8% for Hong Kong and 5.0% for Singapore. It also forecasts that China will expand by 4.5% in 2026 and the US by 2.3%.

The IMF's new figure still falls short of the 11.05% projection that Taiwan's Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) issued in August.

Strong exports are expected to push Taiwan's current account surplus to 22.0% of GDP this year, one of the largest among major economies. The fund also lifted its inflation forecast for the island to 2.0%, up from 1.5% in April. It expects unemployment to hold broadly steady at 3.4%.

"Two major transformative forces -- geopolitics and technology -- are reshaping the global economy, with their short-term impact gradually coming into view and their longer-term impact still largely unknown," the IMF said in the report.

The fund said "technology is most recently playing out as a positive demand shock powered by investment in AI and related hardware and infrastructure," adding: "Trade flows show this most strikingly."