Taiwan’s industrial output contracted 3.28 percent year-on-year last month, the biggest decline in 15 months, because of declining output of machinery equipment, cars and car parts, computers, electronics and optical products, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Last month’s output was 23.79 percent higher than February, when the Lunar New Year holiday shortened the number of working days, the ministry said.
Manufacturing production — which accounts for more than 90 percent of the nation’s total factory output and includes the electronics, chemical, machinery, foodstuffs and textile sectors — declined 3.24 percent year-on-year last month.
In the first quarter, industrial output rose 0.78 percent year-on-year because of an increase in construction activity, but declined 6.1 percent from a quarter ago, the ministry said.
The latest report showed machinery equipment output last month dropped 13.63 percent year-on-year, which was mainly due to increased competition from Japanese companies amid the depreciation of the yen and decreasing global demand.
The output of automobiles and key components for automobiles also declined 9.2 percent from a year earlier as customers waited for prices to decline amid the depreciation of the yen, Yang Kuei-hsien (楊貴顯), deputy director-general of the ministry’s statistics department, told a press conference.
The 7.04 percent year-on-year decline in computers, electronics and optical products last month was mainly due to the reduced output of new smartphones as a result of a shortage of key components, Yang said.
Citing the ministry’s sentiment survey among manufacturers, Yang said the ministry expects industrial output this month to be flat from last month, but to rise slightly compared with a year ago.
As for this quarter, he said industrial output would likely see a quarter-on-quarter increase, but the increase would be mild.
The industrial output data came after the ministry said on Monday that export orders — an indication of shipments for the next one to three months — last month contracted 6.6 percent to US$35.84 billion from US$38.37 billion a year ago, the second consecutive annual decline this year.
Market sentiment has been highly volatile recently, Yang said, adding that the outlook for the second half of this year remained murky.
“For example, the market conditions in the petrochemical and steel industries shifted from positive to gloomy after the Lunar New Year holiday,” Yang said.
On the domestic front, revenue of the wholesale, retail and restaurant sectors was NT$1.18 trillion (US$39.57 billion) last month, down 0.7 percent from a year ago, but 13.7 percent higher than the previous month, the ministry said in a separate report.
Cumulative revenue last quarter amounted to NT$3.44 trillion, up 0.4 percent year-on-year, the data showed.
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],”