Industrial production fell 5.65 percent year-on-year last month as weak demand dampened the recovery following the Lunar New Year holiday, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Last month’s data marked the ninth consecutive month of annual declines, the ministry said.
The government’s industrial production gauge for the nation’s main industries saw an across-the-board annual decline last month for manufacturing, mining and quarrying, electricity and gas supply, and water supply.
The sole exception was architectural engineering, as companies tend to initiate projects ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday.
The manufacturing sector — which accounts for more than 90 percent of industrial output — fell 6.32 percent year-on-year and 3.67 percent month-on-month.
In particular, the electronic components industry, which is the backbone of the nation’s manufacturing sector, saw an annual decline of 7.46 percent as tepid consumer electronics sales crimped inventory orders for ICs, printed circuit boards, display panels and glass substrates.
The semiconductor industry felt the brunt of the downturn last month, with output declining 10.52 percent year-on-year from the high basis set last year, the ministry said.
Production in the computer industry dipped 7.77 percent from the previous year due to soft demand for handheld devices, tablets, notebooks and semiconductor testing equipment, offsetting gains in output for smartwatches and computer components.
Industrial production is not expected to recover significantly until May, Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Yang Kuei-hsien (楊貴顯) told a news conference in Taipei.
“The slump will likely persist this month, due to the lull during the Lunar New Year holiday,” Yang said, adding that the Feb. 6 earthquake is estimated to dampened technology-sector output in the south by between 5 percent and 7 percent.
Meanwhile, the inventory-to-sales ratio for the manufacturing sector improved to 72.86 percent from 74.35 percent in December last year, with the figure for the electronic components industry improving to 52.34 percent from 57.2 percent.
“Although these figures indicate a period of inventory digestion in the electronics sector might be approaching its end, they do not signal a recovery in overall economic growth momentum,” Yang said.
“Companies often adjust their inventory levels in response to softening global economic growth,” Yang said, adding that a recovery would need a significant rise in sales and demand.
“Inventory levels among businesses will continue to fluctuate, but at a narrower band than previous economic downturns,” he said.
Yang said that the few bright spots are the steel and machine tools industries, where prices have began stabilizing and companies have been reporting better visibility of upcoming order volumes.
In a separate release, the ministry said that domestic commercial sales — which include the food and beverage, retail and wholesale sectors — last month fell 6.1 percent year-on-year to NT$806 billion (US$24.07 billion).
Despite a setback in wholesale sector, retail sales gained 6.9 percent year-on-year to NT$362.7 billion, a new monthly high, while restaurant sales gained 7.5 percent year-on-year to NT$37.6 billion, data showed.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
RSS