The nation’s manufacturing production value dropped 9.21 percent year-on-year to NT$3.33 trillion (US$101.93 billion) last quarter, mainly affected by the falling prices of international crude oil and some petrochemical firms’ scheduled annual maintenance, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
“The annual decline in manufacturing production value marks the largest scale of decline since the fourth quarter of 2009,” Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Yang Kuei-hsien (楊貴顯) said by telephone.
The latest manufacturing data came after the government last week lowered its GDP growth target for this year to 1.56 percent on sluggish exports.
The poor economic data have made local investors jittery, with the benchmark TAIEX yesterday closing 1.9 percent lower at 8,021.84 points, the lowest in nearly 23 months.
Yang said the production value of chemical materials plunged 14.37 percent annually to NT$463.2 billion last quarter, while basic metal industry manufacturing production value plummeted 18.17 percent to NT$324.4 billion from a year earlier, due to falling prices of steel products.
The combined production value of computer, electronics and optical products fell 21.51 percent to NT$172.4 billion last quarter, mainly because of softer-than-expected demand for smartphones, notebook computers and LCD TVs, Yang said.
Hit by weak demand for flat panels, solar cells and LED products, the electronics component industry posted a 3.4 percent annual decline in production value to NT$904 billion last quarter, Yang said.
Due to increased international competition, the production value of the automobile industry fell 8.13 percent to NT$104.8 billion from a year earlier, he added.
However, production value in the semiconductor industry surged 12.94 percent to NT$295.3 billion, while machinery goods grew 2.45 percent to NT$173.9 billion last quarter from a year earlier, data showed.
Yang said that although machinery goods showed an increase in production value from a year earlier, production volume in the industry fell month-by-month last quarter due to fewer export orders, indicating falling average selling prices and slowing growth momentum.
The statistics indicated that Chinese orders for machine tools last month dropped 20 percent from a year earlier, suggesting the industry’s production value might continue to fall this quarter.
Overall, it is possible that the manufacturing sector might see another annual decline in production value this quarter, as some negative factors — such as cheap international crude, weak global economic growth and fierce international competition — could still put pressures on industries, Yang said.
“Whether the manufacturing sector’s performance picks up this quarter will depend on export orders for the semiconductor industry,” Yang said.
The ministry is scheduled to release last month’s export orders performance this afternoon.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS