Taiwan’s year-on-year growth in exports hit its lowest level since October 2009 amid continuous global economic uncertainties and intense competition for technology products, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Outbound shipments rose 1.3 percent from a year earlier to US$24.68 billion last month, slower than the 11.7 percent growth -recorded in October, the ministry said in a report.
On a monthly basis, exports declined 8.7 percent last month after rising for the previous two months, the report said.
“The eurozone debt crisis and a slowing economic recovery in the US struck down global economic momentum, dragging down Taiwan’s exports,” Lin Lee-jen (林麗貞), director of the ministry’s statistics department, told a press conference.
Exports declined for the electronics, information and communication technology, chemicals, textiles and plastics sectors, marking their lowest annual growth rate since September 2009, Lin said.
Exports to the six main ASEAN countries increased 30.3 percent from a year ago to total US$4.6 billion last month, hitting the second-highest level in history, with the bloc’s proportion of exports rising to 18.7 percent, the highest proportion ever, the report’s data showed.
However, exports to other markets, including China and Hong Kong, the US, Japan and Europe, all showed a decrease last month from the previous year.
The slowdown was also reflected in imports, with inbound shipments dropping 10.4 percent from a year earlier to US$21.47 billion last month, compared with October’s 11.8 percent rise, the ministry said.
Imports of capital goods declined 32.4 percent from a year earlier to US$2.97 billion, with mechanical goods imports falling for the fifth straight month to US$1.71 billion, ministry data showed.
However, imports of consumer goods hit their second-highest level of US$2.12 billion, led by demand for automobiles, it said.
Lin expected full-year imports and exports to each grow by about 13 percent from last year, but said the slowing global economy might impact trade in the fourth quarter.
Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂), chief economist at Citigroup in Taipei, said the annual growth of exports last month was far below market expectations of 8.6 percent, indicating that exports may have a second sequential decline in the fourth quarter.
If this is the case, it has “added to the risk of a technical recession in the fourth quarter,” Cheng said in a research report, adding that it might bring forward the cyclical bottom to the fourth quarter, instead of the first quarter next year.
Nonetheless, this month’s exports are likely to stay at the same level compared with those of last month, avoiding a year-on-year contraction for exports in the fourth quarter, Cheng said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six