The nation’s industrial output contracted by 5.32 percent last month from a year earlier, virtually unchanged from a revised 5.75 percent decline in August, as inventory digestion dragged on for all makers except chemical product suppliers, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
“The data show the industry has yet to emerge from a protracted inventory adjustment, which has extended into the current quarter,” Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Yang Kuei-hsien (楊貴顯) told a media briefing.
The situation might improve with the advent of Christmas sales season in the West, but could remain soft compared with levels a year earlier, Yang said.
The government’s industrial production gauge measures output in five major industries — manufacturing, mining and quarrying, electricity and gas supply, water supply, and architectural engineering — and is expressed as a percentage of real output in the base year of 2011 with a score of 100.
The latest production gauge showed that output from the manufacturing sector — which accounts for more than 90 percent of industrial output — dropped 5.6 percent last month from a year earlier.
A closer look at the various sectors within the manufacturing industry show that output from the electronics sector dropped 7.46 percent last month from a year earlier, with semiconductor makers posting a 7.68 percent decline and flat-panel and critical components suppliers printing an 18.81 percent fall, the report showed.
Electronics firms weighed 31.68 percent of total manufacturing output as the nation is home to the world’s leading contract chipmakers, display vendors and camera lens vendors.
Solar battery suppliers proved to be the exception with production jumping 24.64 percent last month from a year earlier, thanks to demand from China, the report said.
During the July-to-September period, industrial production weakened 4.56 percent from a year earlier, while output from the manufacturing sector dropped 4.65 percent annually, the report showed, boding ill for third-quarter GDP figures that are to be announced on Friday next week.
For the first nine months, industrial production shrank by a mild 0.19 percent from a year earlier, while the manufacturing sector’s output managed 0.13 percent gain year-on-year, the report said.
An outlook survey printed 45.1 percent for this month, suggesting a continued inventory adjustment event though the output value might grow modestly, Yang said.
In particular, car and auto-parts makers are upbeat about business prospects after emerging from the lunar Ghost Month and typhoons that dented production by 4.41 percent last month and by 5.7 percent last quarter, Yang said.
Revenues from non-manufacturing sectors — including wholesale, retailers and restaurant operators — dropped 4.5 percent year-on-year to NT$1.19 trillion (US$36.60 billion) last month, a separate report showed.
Wholesale revenue amounted to NT$833.9 billion last month, dropping 5.3 percent from a year earlier, weighed by lower demand for building materials, memory chips, flat panels and steel products, the report said.
Retail sales registered a 3 percent annual decline to NT$321 billion, attributable to lackluster car and fuel purchases, the report added.
Dining expenditure gained 1.5 percent year-on-year to NT$33.2 billion last month, slowing from pickups of 2.3 percent and 2.9 percent in August and July, the report said.
The ministry said its survey among local retailers and restaurant operators showed that they expect business to strengthen this month, but wholesale companies have adopted a conservative view.
The ongoing anniversary promotions among department stores might spur demand in line with the high season, Yang said.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
CONCERNS: Tech companies investing in AI businesses that purchase their products have raised questions among investors that they are artificially propping up demand Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday said that the company would be participating in OpenAI’s latest funding round, describing it as potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made.” “We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang told reporters while visiting Taipei. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.” Huang did not say exactly how much Nvidia might contribute, but described the investment as “huge.” “Let Sam announce how much he’s going to raise — it’s for him to decide,” Huang said, referring to OpenAI
Nvidia Corp’s negotiations to invest as much as US$100 billion in OpenAI have broken down, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported, exposing a potential rift between two of the most powerful companies in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The discussions stalled after some inside Nvidia expressed concerns about the transaction, the WSJ reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the deliberations. OpenAI makes the popular chatbot ChatGPT, while Nvidia dominates the market for AI processors that help develop such software. The companies announced the agreement in September last year, saying at the time that they had signed a letter of intent for a strategic
RSS