The value of export orders dropped 5.9 percent annually and 4.1 percent monthly to US$35.79 billion last month, dragged down mainly by declining orders from China and Hong Kong, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The value of orders from China and Hong Kong fell by US$1.17 billion from a year earlier to US$8.98 billion last month, accounting for 52.7 percent of the US$2.22 billion annual drop in overall export orders last month, the ministry said.
“The increasing localization of supply chains in China is an issue that we have to face seriously,” Department of Statistics Director-General Lin Lee-jen (林麗貞) told a news conference in Taipei, adding that last month’s data on orders from China and Hong Kong marked the fifth consecutive month of decline, excluding Lunar New Year holiday factors.
Photo: CNA
Weaker-than-expected growth in China has also affected demand for Taiwanese goods, Lin said. She said it would be worth observing if the annual decline in export orders from China and Hong Kong would extend throughout the year, citing the faster-than-expected rise of supply chains in China.
“Aside from flat panels, we noticed that Taiwan’s integrated circuit design, packaging and testing service sectors have also been facing increasing challenges in China,” Lin said.
In addition, the weak demand for PCs in Europe and handheld devices in emerging markets also affected the performance of the nation’s electronics and precision instruments industries, Lin said.
Apart from the information and communication technology industry, which saw a 2.3 percent annual increase in orders to US$9.7 billion, the ministry’s report showed broad declines in orders for electronics, precision instruments, basic metals, petrochemicals and machinery products last month from the same period a year ago.
By country, the US was still Taiwan’s largest export destination, with orders increasing 5.2 percent to US$9.79 billion from the same period a year ago, Lin said.
However, the annual growth rate for US orders was slower than the 14 percent registered a month earlier, an indicator of weakening demand as the product cycle for Apple Inc’s iPhone nears a refresh, Lin said.
Orders from China and Hong Kong, Europe, ASEAN and Japan all saw an annual decline last month, with orders from China and Hong Kong and Japan plunging by double-digit percentage points from a year ago, Lin said.
Lin said the ministry forecasts the value of this month’s export orders to be flat or decline from last month’s US$35.79 billion. As such, the value of export orders this month will likely decline from last year’s US$38.82 billion, she said.
The value of export orders totaled US$180.47 billion in the first five months of this year, 0.6 percent less than in the same period last year, the ministry’s data showed.
The total value for the first half of this year is expected to be less than the US$220.47 billion in the same period last year, Lin said.
However, Lin said the ministry remains optimistic on export orders in the second half of this year, citing the upcoming launches of Microsoft Corp’s Windows 10 operating system and new Apple products.
The US Department of State yesterday criticized Beijing over its misrepresentation of the US’ “one China” policy in the latest diplomatic salvo between the two countries over a bid by Taiwan to regain its observer status at the World Health Assembly, the decisionmaking body of the WHO. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to publicly misrepresent U.S. policy,” Department of State spokesman Ned Price wrote on Twitter. “The United States does not subscribe to the PRC’s ‘one China principle’ — we remain committed to our longstanding, bipartisan one China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, Three Joint Communiques, and
FATES LINKED: The US president said that sanctions on Russia over Ukraine must exact a ‘long-term price,’ because otherwise ‘what signal does that send to China?’ US President Joe Biden yesterday vowed that US forces would defend Taiwan militarily in the event of a Chinese attack in his strongest statement to date on the issue. Beijing is already “flirting with danger,” Biden said following talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, in which the pair agreed to monitor Chinese naval activity and joint Chinese-Russian exercises. Asked if Washington was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, he replied: “Yes.” “That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said. “We agreed with the ‘one China’ policy, we signed on to it ... but the idea that it can be
SUBTLE? While Biden said the US policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan had not changed, the group targeted China and Russia without naming them Leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US yesterday warned against attempts to “change the status quo by force,” as concerns grow about whether China could invade Taiwan. The issue of Taiwan loomed over a leadership meeting in Tokyo of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) nations — the US, Japan, Australia and India — who stressed their determination to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region in the face of an increasingly assertive China, although Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the group was not targeting any one country. The four leaders said in a joint statement issued after their talks
Nearly half of Taiwanese believe President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has not done enough to prepare the nation against Chinese aggression, the a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation showed. Asked whether the Tsai administration’s military and non-military preparations to defend Taiwan are adequate, 30.6 percent said they were “mostly inadequate” and 18.9 percent said they “very inadequate,” while 25.7 percent said they were “mostly adequate” and 7.1 percent said they were “very adequate.” Another 17.6 percent had no opinion or did not know enough to form a judgement. Still, 51 percent of respondents approved of Tsai’s national defense policy,
RSS