The nation’s exports grew at a lower-than-expected pace last month because of a higher comparison base last year and weaker-than-expected seasonal demand, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Outbound shipments totaled US$26.43 billion last month, up 4.7 percent from the same month last year, the ministry said in a report.
Cumulative exports in the first nine months of the year rose 3.5 percent year-on-year to US$234.65 billion, the report said.
However, last month’s figure was 5.9 percent less than August’s level and surprised the ministry.
“Exports seemed to have entered a ‘quiet period’ last month,” Department of Statistics Director Yeh Maan-tzwu (葉滿足) told a press conference.
That was because restocking demand for China’s week-long National Day holiday this year ended long before the Mid-Autumn Festival, which fell on the first week last month, while demand ahead of the year-end holiday shopping season in the US and Europe has yet to materialize, Yeh said.
Among major export items, rubber and plastics products, as well as the minerals sector, showed the weakest demand last month, the ministry said.
Shipments of rubber and plastic products dropped 9.2 percent to US$1.81 billion last month from a year earlier on sluggish demand from China, while the minerals sector saw US$1.8 billion in exports last month, down 5.1 percent from the same period last year, on lower transit trades, according to the report.
However, electronics exports — the nation’s largest export sector — remained strong at US$8.89 billion last month, a jump of 13.7 percent from the same period last year, to reach its second-highest level in history, the report showed.
Yeh remained confident that exports for this month would continue growing year-on-year, with outbound shipments for the fourth quarter likely reaching the 3.59 percent set by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group senior economist Raymond Yeung (楊宇霆) shared Yeh’s positive view, saying the negative impact on Taiwan’s exports should be transitory, with the recent weakening of the New Taiwan dollar set to boost export growth.
The ministry’s report also showed that imports last month totaled US$22.93 billion, down 4.4 percent from the previous month, but up 0.2 percent from the same month last year.
Imports of consumer goods surged 9.4 percent to US$2.61 billion last month from a year earlier, with mobile phone imports climbing 69.3 percent, driven by the sales launch of Apple Inc’s iPhone 6 late last month, the report said.
For the first nine months of the year, imports rose 3.2 percent from a year earlier to US$208.3 billion, data showed.
That increased the nation’s trade surplus to US$3.5 billion last month, up US$1.15 billion from the same period last year.
The trade surplus in the first nine months totaled US$26.35 billion, data showed.
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