Hypermarkets and department stores saw double-digit growth in sales over the Lunar New Year holiday as a result of consumer voucher promotions, but it remains to be seen whether the vouchers will raise GDP by at least 0.66 percentage points as hoped, analysts said.
Retailers said sales volume had increased 20 percent over the holiday.
Carrefour Taiwan (家樂福), the nation’s largest hypermarket chain, said its holiday sales jumped 20 percent from last year, with shopping vouchers contributing half of the increase.
RT-Mart (大潤發), the second-largest hypermarket chain, reported a sales growth of between 20 percent and 30 percent during the same period, while Far Eastern Geant Co (愛買), the No. 3 chain, saw retail transactions expand nearly 30 percent.
Consumer vouchers constituted 40 percent and 50 percent of transactions for RT-Mart and Far Eastern Geant respectively, the companies said.
The government has printed NT$85.7 billion (US$2.54 billion) in vouchers — NT$3,600 for each citizen and foreign spouse — in the hope of boosting domestic demand amid the economic downturn.
Qualified recipients collected NT$76.2 billion in vouchers on Jan. 18 and another NT$2.01 billion on Saturday, government statistics showed.
As of Thursday, NT$24.28 billion in vouchers had been cashed, accounting for 31.8 percent of the amount distributed, the Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) said. The bank expected the ratio to hit 35 percent this week.
The vouchers also boosted department store chains over the holiday.
Pacific Sogo Department Stores Co (太平洋崇光百貨), Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store (新光三越百貨) and Far Eastern Department Store (遠東百貨) all reported sales increases of 10 percent.
Pacific Sogo and Shin Kong Mitsukoshi attributed a quarter of the increase to deals for customers who paid with vouchers, while Far Eastern said the promotions accounted for 32 percent of sales.
Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂), chief economist at Citigroup Inc Taiwan, said the vouchers could raise GDP growth by 1 percentage point in the first quarter based on the preliminary estimate of his company.
“The voucher plan appears to have been effective in boosting consumer activity, as seen over the holiday,” Cheng said by telephone. “The private sector has been supportive and offered various discounts limited to transactions with the vouchers.”
But Cheng said it was too early to judge the full effect of the vouchers.
Tony Phoo (符銘財), a Taipei-based economist at Standard Chartered Bank, said it remained to be seen whether the public had increased their spending because of the vouchers or used them to pay their usual expenses.
“In the latter scenario, the vouchers will do little to spur economic growth,” Phoo said by telephone.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS