Exports last month reached their second-highest level since the global financial crisis, with shipments of electronics and machinery hitting record highs on increasing global demand, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Exports last month rose US$5.05 billion from a year ago to US$24.05 billion, up 26.6 percent year-on-year, compared with a gain of US$6.64 billion, or 38.5 percent year-on-year, in July. Ministry officials said it was the tenth consecutive month of double-digit export growth.
“Electronics shipments were US$6.87 billion last month, the most ever. Increasing demand also pushed sales of machinery to a record high of US$1.57 billion,” Lin Lee-jen (林麗貞), head of the ministry’s statistics department, told a media briefing.
Of the export gains, shipments of electronic products saw the largest increase at US$1.36 billion, followed by sales of machinery at US$640 million and exports of base metals at US$520 million.
Exports to the US hit their highest level since late 2008 at US$2.93 billion, mostly helped by stellar shipments of information and communication products, the ministry said. Shipments to China, including Hong Kong, were US$9.79 billion, up 18.1 percent year-on-year, accounting for the largest portion of the nation’s foreign trade, 40.7 percent, followed by the ASEAN region at 14.8 percent and the US at 12.2 percent. Standard Chartered chief economist Tony Phoo (符銘財) said that the marginal pickup of exports to China indicated that overseas sales to the world’s largest developing economy appeared to have been impacted by concern over the US and European outlook.
Meanwhile, as domestic investment and consumption continued to increase, imports reached US$21.79 billion, up US$4.76 billion, or 28 percent, year-on-year, the third-highest amount since the financial crisis, the ministry said. Imports of capital equipment were US$3.78 billion, a US$1.48 billion or 64.3 percent increase from a year earlier. It was the sixth consecutive month in which they exceeded US$3 billion.
On a monthly basis, exports rose US$150 million or 0.6 percent while imports grew US$50 million, or 0.2 percent. Shipments to China, including Hong Kong, the US, Europe and Japan all reported month-on-month growth.
Exports to ASEAN countries, however, declined US$350 million, or 9 percent because of reduced sales of oil products to Singapore and Indonesia after major fires at Formosa Plastics, the ministry said.
Nonetheless, the decline in imports of raw materials, which fell 2.3 percent, indicated that “firms are turning to managing inventory until they get clearer picture or visibility into year-end sales demand,” Phoo said.
In the first eight months, exports to China, including Hong Kong, and Japan hit record highs of US$76.26 billion and US$11.82 billion, respectively, while imports of capital equipment reached a record high of US$26.05 billion, up US$11.04 billion or 73.6 percent, compared with the same period last year.
Looking ahead, ministry officials remained conservative on whether exports will exceed the record high of US$25.47 billion set in May in the following four months, saying that the fourth-quarter performance will not be as good as in the third quarter.
“Exports performed very well in the first half of the year, so it is less likely that the second half will make a breakthrough,” Lin said.
However, she expected exports for the full year to reach US$272.9 billion, the highest amount ever.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to