The nation’s export orders grew at a better-than-expected annual rate of 7 percent to US$43.62 billion last month, mainly driven by robust demand for consumer electronics during the Christmas holiday season, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The figure represents the fourth consecutive month of annual growth. The increase exceeded the ministry’s estimate of 2.6 percent to 5 percent.
“The strong and positive market movements on smartphones, notebooks, TVs, game consoles and servers were the growth drivers last month,” Department of Statistics Director-General Lin Lee-jen (林麗貞) told a news conference.
Thanks to consumer electronics sales, orders for information and communication technology products and electronic products — the pillars of export orders — expanded by 6.9 percent and 10.1 percent year-on-year to US$14.58 billion and US$11.75 billion respectively, the ministry’s data showed.
The consumer electronics orders were mainly placed from the US, Lin said, adding that US orders surged by 10.1 percent annually to a record high of US$12.97 billion last month.
The precision instrument segment saw an annual increase of 1.8 percent to US$2.19 billion last month, ending 24 consecutive months of annual declines, the data showed.
Lin said that continued rising demand for panels from China drove up average selling prices, which were a significant reason export orders of precision instruments swung back into positive territory.
Taiwan’s traditional industries — rubber and plastics goods, and basic metal products — saw double-digit percentage annual growth in orders last month on the back of improving prices of global crude oil and steel products, Lin said.
Lin said orders for machinery goods posted double-digit percentage growth of 12.3 percent to US$1.79 billion last month, on the back of China’s increasing need for industrial automation equipment.
However, overall export orders this month might slightly decline by 2.2 percent from last month’s US$43.62 billion, due to the start of the slow season for consumer electronics products such as smartphones and notebooks, Lin said.
The ministry estimates this month’s export orders will be from US$42.6 billion to US$43.6 billion, which would represent a year-on-year increase of between 9.8 percent and 12.4 percent, Lin said.
Lin said the estimate would bring accumulative export orders to between US$445.9 billion and US$446.9 billion this year, a contraction of between 1.1 percent and 1.3 percent from last year.
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