Taiwan’s export orders for last month are expected to post an increase from a year earlier, reversing a year-on-year decline seen in January, largely due to a low comparison base over the same period last year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Saturday.
The ministry said the low comparison base resulted from the reduced number of working days in February last year, when the Lunar New Year holiday was celebrated from Feb. 9 to Feb. 17.
Citing a recent survey targeting local exporters, the ministry said that export orders made last month could reach US$30 billion, compared with US$29.04 billion recorded a year earlier.
In January, Taiwan’s export orders fell 2.8 percent year-on-year to US$36.11 billion, ending a six-month period of positive growth, with orders placed by China and Hong Kong down 3.9 percent and orders from the US down 5 percent from a year earlier.
On a month-on-month basis, according to the survey, 19.1 percent of the respondents said their orders last month would rise from January, while 30.3 percent thought their orders would fall, and 50.6 percent said their orders would stay little changed from a month earlier.
Although many economists at home and abroad expect that global economic fundamentals will improve this year as growth accelerates in the US and Europe, the ministry said that due to an unusually cold winter, a driver of growth has been compromised to some extent, hurting Taiwan’s exports.
In addition, China is undergoing economic restructuring, which has cut demand, and this in turn could further impact local exporters, the ministry said.
In the middle of last month, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics increased its prediction of the nation’s economic growth this year to 2.82 percent, from an earlier estimate of a 2.59 percent growth, citing an improvement in the nation’s exports and private consumption.
Last year, Taiwan’s economic growth stood at 2.11 percent.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by