The nation’s export orders rose US$8.46 billion to US$31.26 billion last month, a year-on-year increase of 37.11 percent and the sixth-highest-ever recorded yearly increase, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Last month’s figure was slightly lower than the US$31.75 billion registered in October. Orders for the first 11 months of the year fell 12.15 percent, or US$40.2 billion, to US$290.71 billion, it said.
The ministry predicted this year’s export orders would total at least US$320 billion.
“We expect that this year’s export orders will see a single digit year-on-year contraction because of the low base period last December,” Huang Ji-shih (黃吉實), director of the ministry’s statistics department, said at a press conference.
Export orders from Europe last month rose US$5.98 billion to US$76.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 14.47 percent, representing the first increase from the region since the global financial crisis hit Taiwan’s export-dependent economy last year.
In addition, export orders from China, including Hong Kong, soared to US$7.88 billion last month with a year-on-year increase of 73.32 percent. Orders from the US totaled US$6.87 billion last month and Japan placed US$3.83 billion in orders, the ministry’s statistics showed.
“The export orders increase in Europe last month was the result of a lower base period,” Tony Phoo (符銘財), chief economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Taipei, said by telephone yesterday.
Performance for the first quarter of next year will depend on the Chinese market because of increased demand before the Lunar New Year, he said.
Information and telecommunications products still recorded the highest amount of orders at US$8.57 million last month, up 33.91 percent or US$2.71 billion from a year ago, followed by electronic products at US$7.59 billion and precision machinery products at US$2.77 billion.
“We are pleased that export orders in the electrical machinery sector increased 26.63 percent to US$1.03 billion to officially end year-on-year contraction,” Huang said.
The ministry yesterday also released last month’s industrial production index, with the reading expanding 31.46 percent from a year ago, compared to an increase of 7.07 percent in October.
Among the five major categories of the industrial production index, the manufacturing sub-index reported the largest increase at 34.39 percent from last year.
“This is the largest year-on-year rise [for industrial production] since August 1978, when a 35.94 percent rise was recorded,” Huang said.
However, the industrial production reading of 108.8 points last month was lower than the previous month’s 110.2, a situation that Matt Robinson, a Sydney-based economist at Moody’s Economy.com, said could imply that developed markets could be reaching satiation for Taiwanese electronics goods.
“This could limit the potential for further stellar increases in industrial production in coming months,” Robinson said in a statement yesterday.
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