Export orders fell 3.04 percent last month from a year earlier to US$36.47 billion, marking the third consecutive month of single-digit year-on-year decline because of continuous weak demand, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
By country, export orders from China — the nation’s largest export destination — declined 4.32 percent year-on-year last month to US$9.42 billion, with precision instruments accounting for the biggest decline.
“The decrease [in orders] marked the sixth consecutive year-on-year decline and reflected China’s economy remaining in a conundrum,” Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜), deputy director of the ministry’s Department of Statistics, told a press conference.
Export orders from the US grew 5.86 percent year-on-year to US$8.75 billion last month, with electronic products contributing most to the increase, topping the same month last year by US$240 million, the ministry’s data showed.
“The US was the only region among the six major export regions from which Taiwan received year-on-year export growth in May, indicating better momentum in the US economy and stronger private consumption in the country,” Tsai said.
Orders from Europe fell 8.17 percent annually to US$6.33 billion, with transportation goods accounting for the most contraction, the data showed.
Six ASEAN countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam) placed US$3.88 billion in orders with Taiwan — a decline of 8.16 percent from last year, data showed.
It marked the first decline for the six ASEAN nations since the financial crisis of 2008, Tsai said.
Last month’s export orders from Japan declined for the 13th consecutive month since May last year, but last month was the smallest decline recorded, indicating that Japan was recovering from the earthquake and tsunami in March last year, Tsai said.
By product, information technology and electronics goods accounted for the greatest number of orders with totals of US$9 billion and US$8.52 billion respectively. The US and China were the two largest importers of those goods, the ministry said.
On a monthly basis, export orders rose 1.07 percent from the US$36.09 billion reported in April, the data showed.
Orders in the first five months contracted US$970 million, or 0.55 percent, to US$176.37 billion from a year ago, the data showed.
This month, export orders are expected to dip year-on-year from the US$37.36 billion recorded a year ago, the ministry said.
Those figures should improve slightly from last month given that a ministry sentiment index stood at 55.59, which was above the base of 50, Tsai said.
Looking ahead, some beneficial factors, such as events like Computex and Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, would drive up export orders for handheld devices and notebook PCs, Tsai said.
China’s lowering of interest rates to stimulate domestic consumption would also help export orders.
However, the debt crisis in the eurozone, the slowing global economy, declining demand for plastic, chemical and basic metal raw materials and the approach of the traditional weak season for electronic industries would negatively affect the export order outlook in the near future, Tsai said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS