As Chinese companies stocked up on electronics products ahead of an expected Lunar New Year buying spree, Taiwan’s factory output set yet another record high last month by expanding 19.4 percent from a year ago, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The index of industrial output hit 130.34 last month, up 3.1 percent from October. This was the sixth time that factory output reached record level this year, with five straight record highs from March to July.
Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜), deputy director general of the ministry’s statistics department, said the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls in early February next year, has prompted companies to build up their inventories and that has kept Taiwanese factories busy.
“Economic growth in China has surpassed that of Europe and the US,” Tsai said, adding that the effect impacted Taiwanese factories, which in the past saw highest output in August and October for the Christmas shopping spree.
Now the highest output has occurred in November, marking a shift of dependence toward Lunar New Year’s effect, she said.
Factory output for this month is expected to post 25 percent growth year-on-year, while output for the year looks set to expand more than 20 percent from last year, which would be another record high.
The record was set in 1971, when industrial output grew by 23.4 percent, while the next-highest figure was in 1978 with 22.5 percent growth.
Factory output for the first 11 months jumped 27.3 percent from the same period last year.
Manufacturing industry production — which accounts for more than 90 percent of Taiwan’s total factory output, and includes the electronics, chemicals, machinery as well as food and textile sectors — grew 29 percent for the first 11 months.
Output of electronic components — a major manufacturing industry sub-sector — was up 44.3 percent and those for machinery rose 62.5 percent — marking the highest rise among all manufacturing sub-sectors.
The ministry said on Monday that export orders hit its second-highest recorded level of US$35.74 billion last month, up 14.3 percent from a year earlier, amid the backdrop of strong international demand for Taiwanese consumer electronics.
The ministry yesterday released consumption figures for last month. Total sales for the wholesale, retail as well as food and beverage sectors totaled NT$1.17 trillion (US$39.2 billion) amid strong domestic consumption. That was a 5.9 percent increase from last year, but a drop of 3.2 percent from October, the figures show.
Combined sales for the first 11 months rose 10 percent to NT$12.47 trillion.
Tsai said a lower unemployment rate, higher salaries and the rising stock market were all factors pushing up local consumption.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
RSS