Exports expand in March thanks to demand from China

Taiwan's exports rose more than economists predicted last month as surging shipments to China, the world's sixth-largest economy, more than made up for a drop in sales to the US, where concern about the Iraq war curbed spending and investment.

Exports rose a tenth from a year earlier to US$12.6 billion, after rising 22 percent in February, a finance ministry report showed. That beat the 3 percent growth predicted by economists in a Bloomberg News survey.

Rising exports may help the economy meet the government's 3.7 percent growth projection this year. That forecast assumes overseas sales, which account for about half of the country's gross domestic product, will rise 7.4 percent.

Sales to China rose 82 percent to US$1.4 billion. Sales to Hong Kong rose 7 percent to US$2.9 billion. Many goods headed for China go through Hong Kong because of restrictions on trade between China and Taiwan.

Sales to the US, the second-biggest buyer of Taiwan's exports after China, fell 0.8 percent to US$2.3 billion as consumer confidence slumped to a nine-year low.

Shipments to Japan fell 3.4 percent to US$1.1 billion, while those to Europe rose 1.6 percent to US$1.8 billion.

Shipments of computer chips and other electronics goods, which make up the biggest share of the total, increased by a fifth. Sales of telecommunications goods fell 17 percent.

Imports rose 7.4 percent to US$10.9 billion, after rising 29 percent in February. The increase was in line with economists' forecasts. Taiwan's crude oil import bill rose 14 percent to US$654 million, the report showed.

The trade surplus rose 32.4 percent to US$1.7 billion, compared with a 6.9 percent fall in February. The trade surplus in the first quarter came in at US$3.69 billion, down 28.2 percent from the same period last year.

Exports in the three-month period rose 11.4 percent to US$32.50 billion, while imports grew 19.9 percent to US$28.81 billion, the ministry added.

The ministry said it expects exports and imports to continue picking up in the second quarter.

"We still see the global economy growing ... There are usually more working days in the second quarter than in the first," the ministry's statistics director Hsu Kuo-chung (許國忠) told reporters.