Export orders for this month and next month are expected to continue contracting compared with the same period last year as the electronics industry enters its weak season and exports to China fall, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said yesterday as it announced last month’s export order figures.
Export orders — an indicator of exports over the next three months — declined 3.52 percent last month year-on-year to US$36.09 billion because demand for information and communications technology products dropped as a result of customers transitioning from old to new products, the ministry said.
The decline was the second consecutive monthly contraction after orders fell 1.58 percent in March from the previous year.
By country, export orders from China — the nation’s -largest -export destination — plummeted 7.8 percent year-on-year last month to US$9.26 billion, the lowest level seen in three years, with precision instruments accounting for the biggest decline because demand was not as strong as expected during the Labor Day holiday.
“The decrease [in orders] reflected China’s slowing economy, which is expected to bottom out in May or June,” Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜), deputy director of the -ministry’s statistics department, told a press conference.
Export orders from the US grew 0.79 percent year-on-year to US$8.37 billion last month, while those from Europe slid 0.78 percent annually to US$6.49 billion, data showed.
By product, information and electronics goods accounted for the greatest number of orders with a total of US$8.64 billion and US$8.46 billion respectively.Europe and China were the two largest importers of those goods, the ministry said.
On a monthly basis, export orders dropped 6.11 percent from the US$38.37 billion reported in March.
The ministry said improving demand from the US — the nation’s second-largest export destination — and ASEAN nations was unable to offset the sharp decline in orders from China and Japan.
Orders in the first four months grew 0.13 percent to US$139.9 billion from US$139.7 billion a year ago, data showed.
This month, export orders are expected to slide slightly year-on-year from the US$37 billion recorded a year ago, the ministry said.
Those figures should improve slightly from last month given that a ministry sentiment index stood at 59.42, which was well above the base of 50, officials said.
The outlook for this month and next month is for only moderate growth, with the electronics industry entering its slow season and the eurozone debt crisis continuing to cause concern, the ministry said.
“The slight growth will be generated by high-tech product innovations, such as smartphones, tablets, Ultrabooks and cloud computing products, along with China’s downward revision of the required reserve ratio also playing a positive role,” Tsai 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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”