The nation’s exports showed a double-digit decline last month from a year earlier, ending a fourth straight month of growth, as fewer working days in the month dragged down shipments, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Exports stood at US$19.74 billion last month, down 15.8 percent year-on-year and 23.1 percent month-on-month, the ministry said in a report.
Director of the ministry’s statistics department Yeh Maan-tzwu (葉滿足) attributed the decrease to the impact of the Lunar New Year holiday.
However, on a seasonally adjusted basis exports actually increased 2.1 percent last month, which represented a seventh consecutive month of growth and indicated that exports are gaining momentum on the back of a mild recovery in the global economy, the report said.
Combining data for the first two months of this year — a more accurate indicator — outbound shipments grew 2 percent from a year earlier to US$45.41 billion, a positive sign for the export sector, Yeh said.
Exports to the six main ASEAN members totaled US$8.74 billion in the first two months, reaching its highest level ever during the same period, with exports to China and Hong Kong up 4.3 percent to US$17.53 billion, both signifying a stable trend, the report’s data showed.
However, shipments to the US and Europe both contracted in the first two months of the year, as demand from these markets remained weak.
The ministry said it remained confident that exports in the first quarter could grow from a year earlier, but the pace of growth might be slower than the 4.7 percent growth forecast by the government’s statistics agency last month.
The ministry’s report also showed imports declined 8.5 percent year-on-year and 25.3 percent month-on-month to US$18.82 billion, with aggregate imports rising 7 percent to US$44.02 billion in the first two months of the year from the same period a year earlier.
As a result, the nation’s trade surplus was US$1.39 billion in the first two months of the year, down US$2 billion from a year earlier, the data showed.
Katrina Ell, a Sydney-based associate economist at Moody’s Analytics, said yesterday that Taiwan’s exports may trend higher this month, with imports following a similar pattern, citing a high proportion of imports that will be ultimately transformed into goods for export.
Raymond Yeung (楊宇霆), a Hong Kong-based economist at ANZ Research, said the central bank is expected to maintain its current interest rate policy at its board meeting on March 28, adding in a note that “despite resilient trade, domestic demand remains weak.”
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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