Export orders rose 12.8 percent year-on-year to US$31.62 billion last month, driven mainly by the strong demand for precision equipment in Asia and rising orders for electronics products and chemicals, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
While orders last month were the third highest on record, the annual growth rate was slower compared with 18.1 percent in February and 16.9 percent in January, the ministry’s tallies showed.
“The slower growth pace can be attributed to the NT dollar’s appreciation,” Huang Ji-shih (黃吉實), director of the ministry’s Department of Statistics, said at a press briefing yesterday.
Huang said that a stronger NT dollar had a stronger impact on orders from the US and Europe, but did not greatly affect orders from China.
The NT dollar has appreciated 6.63 percent against the US dollar so far this year.
Demand for Taiwanese products from Hong Kong (including China) and Japan was especially strong last month, as export orders from the former grew at an annual pace of 21.7 percent to US$8.7 billion and those from the latter increased 12.29 percent to US$3.14 billion last month, the ministry’s data showed.
Orders from the US totaled US$7.33 billion last month, up 5.2 percent from a year earlier, the ministry said.
In the first three months of the year, export orders reached US$87.8 billion, up 15.7 percent from the same period a year earlier, it said.
The ministry also said yesterday that industrial output last month rose 8.3 percent year-on-year, compared with an annual rise of 15.2 percent in February and an increase of 12.3 percent in January.
Overall, last month’s 12.8 percent annual growth in export orders and 8.3 percent annual increase in industrial output were all lower than the forecasts of Citi Investment Research economist Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂).
Cheng said that emerging market demand was the main driver of export orders.
However, the data still “showed a tug-of-war between weakening industrial country demand and the resilient emerging market demand,” he wrote in the note.
“Going forward, we still expect growth momentum to slow, on deepening US economic slowdown,” he said.
Additional reporting by Jerry Lin
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