Taiwan’s manufacturing sector entered its fourth straight month of contraction last month, with the pace of decline accelerating from a month earlier, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中經院) said in its purchasing managers’ index (PMI) report yesterday.
The PMI fell to 46.7 points last month from 47.7 a month earlier, indicating that momentum of manufacturing activity continued to slow, according to the latest PMI monthly data compiled by the Taipei-based research institute.
A PMI value above 50 indicates expansion, with any lower value signaling contraction.
All firms polled were more cautious about the nation’s near-term economic outlook, with the economy sub-index dropping to 31.7, down 1.3 percentage points from September, the report said.
The new orders sub-index stood at 42.5 last month, down from 47.2 a month earlier, while the new export orders reading slid from 49.1 to 44.8, both entering a fifth consecutive month of contraction, the report found.
The employment sub-index showed 50.9 last month, flat from September, the only sub-index that signified an expansion trend last month.
The research institute started posting its PMI monthly report in January on a trial basis after the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) last year commissioned the CIER to initiate a program to publish Taiwan’s official PMI.
Earlier this month, HSBC’s manufacturing PMI report for Taiwan showed manufacturing entering its fifth straight month of contraction last month, with a PMI index of 47.8 points.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained