The nation's export orders increased 16.89 percent year-on-year to NT$951.37 billion (US$30.31 billion) last month, buoyed by demand from China and Japan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Export orders from China and Hong Kong last month increased by 21.7 percent year-on-year to US$1.44 billion, while orders from Japan rose 22.25 percent year-on-year to US$520 million, the ministry's latest report showed.
"The largest contribution to the year-on-year growth last month came from orders for electronics products, which rose 16.27 percent last month, an increase of US$980 million from the same period a year ago," said Huang Ji-shih (
Export orders totaled US$30.31 billion last month, exceeding the ministry's estimate of US$30 billion, Huang said.
Cheng Cheng-mount (
"Export orders were better than expected last month, mainly as a result of increased orders from Asia and the information technology industry's strong growth," Cheng said by phone yesterday.
Citi had forecast that export orders would grow 15.7 percent year-on-year.
Despite last month's strong performance, Huang said export orders were expected to decline by between US$25 billion and US$26 billion this month, as a result of fewer working days and companies pre-ordering ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays.
Meanwhile, the industrial production index increased 12.29 percent year-on-year last month, with the construction industry seeing a noticeable increase of 21.23 percent as a result of triple-digit growth in Kaohsiung County, Huang said.
During the same period, manufacturing industry grew 12.62 percent year-on-year as a result of rising demand for consumer electronics and ramped up production ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays.
"The manufacturing industry is likely to see year-on-year growth this month, as there are more working days compared to a year ago," Huang said.
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Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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