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.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS