The decline in export orders and industrial production slowed last month, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Export orders fell 22.27 percent year-on-year to US$20.12 billion compared with a record 41.67 percent drop to US$17.68 billion in January, the ministry’s latest data showed.
“We don’t know if the nation’s export orders have reached the bottom and are on their way to recovery, but the decline seems to have slowed down significantly in February,” Huang Ji-shih (黃吉實), director of the ministry’s statistics department, told a press briefing.
Export orders were buoyed by last-minute rush orders from global vendors, Huang said, resulting in 13.81 percent growth month-on-month.
The results were better than Citigroup’s projected 31 percent drop for last month and Standard Chartered Bank’s estimated 24.30 percent drop.
Export orders to the US, China and Europe fell 20.15 percent, 26.30 percent and 19.80 percent respectively to US$4.90 billion, US$4.80 billion and US$3.96 billion from the same period last year.
“They have all improved from January’s record losses,” Huang said.
The only export destination with a drop in orders last month was Japan. Orders from Japan shrank 37.37 percent to US$1.75 billion, Huang said.
“This is not a complete surprise, since Japan announced a 46 percent drop in exports last month,” he said.
Taiwan’s usual top three export industries — telecommunications, consumer electronics and precision instruments — saw an average decline of 26.41 percent, the report showed.
Telecommunications orders fell 10.58 percent to US$4.86 billion, consumer electronics dropped 22.33 percent to US$4.74 billion and precision instruments were down 46.32 percent to US$1.28 billion.
Raw materials replaced precision instruments as the No. 3 export industry last month, with orders totaling US$1.45 billion, representing a 31.75 percent annual decline, Huang said.
The ministry said manufacturers were somewhat optimistic about this month and expected export orders and industrial production to improve from last month.
Industrial production fell 27.14 percent year-on-year last month after plummeting 43.31 percent in January, the ministry said in a separate report yesterday.
Among the top five industrial sectors, construction saw the greatest year-on-year decline in industrial production at 32.77 percent, followed by manufacturing at 27.65 percent, power generation at 10.96 percent, mining at 10.38 percent and water utilities at 6.02 percent.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
RSS