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.
SMART MANUFACTURING: The company aims to have its production close to the market end, but attracting investment is still a challenge, the firm’s president said Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said its long-term global production plan would stay unchanged amid geopolitical and tariff policy uncertainties, citing its diversified global deployment. With operations in Taiwan, Thailand, China, India, Europe and the US, Delta follows a “produce at the market end” strategy and bases its production on customer demand, with major site plans unchanged, Delta president Simon Chang (張訓海) said on the sidelines of a company event yesterday. Thailand would remain Delta’s second headquarters, as stated in its first-quarter earnings conference, with its plant there adopting a full smart manufacturing system, Chang said. Thailand is the firm’s second-largest overseas
‘REMARKABLE SHOWING’: The economy likely grew 5 percent in the first half of the year, although it would likely taper off significantly, TIER economist Gordon Sun said The Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) yesterday raised Taiwan’s GDP growth forecast for this year to 3.02 percent, citing robust export-driven expansion in the first half that is likely to give way to a notable slowdown later in the year as the front-loading of global shipments fades. The revised projection marks an upward adjustment of 0.11 percentage points from April’s estimate, driven by a surge in exports and corporate inventory buildup ahead of possible US tariff hikes, TIER economist Gordon Sun (孫明德) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy likely grew more than 5 percent in the first six months
SUPPLY RESILIENCE: The extra expense would be worth it, as the US firm is diversifying chip sourcing to avert disruptions similar to the one during the pandemic, the CEO said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) on Wednesday said that the chips her company gets from supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would cost more when they are produced in TSMC’s Arizona facilities. Compared with similar parts from factories in Taiwan, the US chips would be “more than 5 percent, but less than 20 percent” in terms of higher costs, she said at an artificial intelligence (AI) event in Washington. AMD expects its first chips from TSMC’s Arizona facilities by the end of the year, Su said. The extra expense is worth it, because the company is
The seizure of one of the largest known mercury shipments in history, moving from mines in Mexico to illegal Amazon gold mining zones, exposes the wide use of the toxic metal in the rainforest, according to authorities. Peru’s customs agency, SUNAT, found 4 tonnes of illegal mercury in Lima’s port district of Callao, according to a report by the non-profit Environmental Investigations Agency (EIA). “This SUNAT intervention has prevented this chemical from having a serious impact on people’s health and the environment, as can be seen in several areas of the country devastated by the illegal use of mercury and illicit activities,”