Last month’s official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to 65.2, the highest figure since its inception in July 2012, benefitting from strong worldwide demand and February’s fewer working days which led to a low base, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday.
“The latest PMI data reflected a solid increase in new business and production among local manufacturers,” CIER president Wu Chung-shu (吳中書) told a news conference in Taipei.
The economist shrugged off concerns raised by reporters that the nation’s economy might be overheating and in danger of crashing, saying that Taiwan remains on course for a stable and modest recovery.
The PMI, a gauge of the health of the manufacturing industry, also climbed to a record high last month and has posted 13 consecutive months of expansions.
PMI scores above 50 indicate expansion and values below the threshold suggest contraction.
The low base helped contribute to last month’s sharp 9.4 point increase and some firms moved shipments ahead of schedule to avoid holiday disruptions early this month, Wu said.
A PMI reading of more than 60 would fuel concerns about overheating in the US, Supply Management Institute in Taiwan (中華採購與供應管理協會) executive director Steve Lai (賴樹鑫) said.
Taiwan’s latest PMI reading was between 58 and 59 after seasonal adjustments, he said.
All sectors reported upticks in business, with makers of electronic components and optical devices seeing the fastest paces of increase, the CIER survey found.
The improvement was particularly evident for the nation’s semiconductor makers, who have been able to outcompete foreign peers with the benefit of technological improvements and superior leadership, Wu said.
Meanwhile, the private Nikkei Taiwan Manufacturing PMI showed a score of 54.5, its highest since April 2011, said Annabel Fiddes, economist at IHS Markit, which compiled the survey.
Fiddes attributed the increase to strong demand from clients in China, the US and Europe.
Companies have hired additional staff and pushed input and output prices higher, the research group said.
Firms are upbeat about business prospects in the coming six to 12 months, both surveys found.
The upturn extended to non-manufacturing sectors, lifting the non-manufacturing index (NMI) to 55.1, reversing February’s slowdown, CIER said in a separate survey.
The moderate pace of improvement in the NMI means that ordinary people by and large have failed to benefit from GDP growth and still remain cautious about spending, Wu said.
Slack private consumption would check economic activity, making overheating unlikely, he said.
Restaurant and hotel operators are particularly gloomy, with the six-month outlook index at 30.8, the survey found.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
CHINA RIVAL: The chips are positioned to compete with Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell products and would enable clusters connecting more than 100,000 chips Moore Threads Technology Co (摩爾線程) introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) in years. “These products will significantly enhance world-class computing speed and capabilities that all developers aspire to,” Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong (張建中), a former Nvidia executive, said on Saturday at a company event in Beijing. “We hope they can meet the needs of more developers in China so that you no longer need to wait for advanced foreign products.” Chinese chipmakers are in
POLICY REVERSAL: The decision to allow sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China came after years of tightening controls and has drawn objections among some Republicans US House Republicans are calling for arms-sale-style congressional oversight of artificial intelligence (AI) chip exports as US President Donald Trump’s administration moves to approve licenses for Nvidia Corp to ship its H200 processor to China. US Representative Brian Mast, the Republican chairman of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which oversees export controls, on Friday introduced a bill dubbed the AI Overwatch Act that would require the US Congress to be notified of AI chips sales to adversaries. Any processors equal to or higher in capabilities than Nvidia’s H20 would be subject to oversight, the draft bill says. Lawmakers would have
RSS