Revenue in the nation’s retail sector in the first two months of the year rose 4.6 percent on an annual basis to NT$713.1 billion (US$24.45 billion), as buying picked up steam during the Lunar New Year holiday, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Friday.
Retail revenue was the highest January-February figure since the ministry started keeping records in 1953 for domestic trade, which includes the retail, wholesale and restaurant sectors, it said.
The ministry reported combined data for the two-month period to screen out the effect of the holiday, as it fell in February this year but in January last year.
Last month alone, retail sales grew 15.7 percent annually to NT$350 billion, the ministry said.
Retail sales of general merchandise — including those sold at department stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets and convenience stores — is a closely watched gauge of household consumer confidence and the ministry’s tallies showed that sales increased 5.5 percent to NT$213.9 billion in the first two months.
The tallies showed that department stores led retail sales in the first two months at NT$54.9 billion (up 2.1 percent year-on-year), followed by convenience stores at NT$53.3 billion (up 7 percent), hypermarkets at NT$39.6 billion (up 7.6 percent) and supermarkets at NT$36.4 billion (up 8.4 percent).
By product categories, sales of cars, motorbikes and auto parts/accessories rose 6.8 percent year-on-year to NT$108 billion in the first two months, on the back of local dealers’ new model launches, Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Wang Shu-chuan (王淑娟) said.
Cumulative sales in the electronics and home appliances sector rose 10.6 percent from a year earlier to NT$64.2 billion in the two-month period, while sales in the textile and clothing sector jumped 3.6 percent annually to NT$51.2 billion, Wang said.
Meanwhile, revenue in the restaurant and beverage sector also reached a record high of NT$81.8 billion, up 2.8 percent year-on-year, backed by strong holiday spending.
As for revenue generated by the wholesale sector, the latest statistics showed that aggregate sales gained 3.7 percent year-on-year to NT$1.56 trillion in the first two months, but the number for last month alone decreased 4 percent to NT$670.4 billion, which the ministry blamed on fewer working days.
The ministry forecast that revenue for the wholesale sector this month would decline 2 percent year-on-year due to a relatively high comparison base last year, while retail sector sales are expected to grow 2 percent, and the restaurant and beverage sector might see revenue increase 3 percent, it added.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by