Taiwan’s factory output last month expanded 14.4 percent from a year ago amid demand from emerging markets and preparations for the Christmas buying spree, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The index of industrial output hit 126.37 points last month, up 2.1 percent from September, and increased 14.4 percent from October last year.
With five straight months of -record-highs from March to July, output for the year is likely to rise more than 20 percent from last year, which, if achieved, will be a record high, the ministry’s latest statistics showed.
The highest record was set in 1971, which saw industrial output grow by 23.4 percent, while the second-highest was in 1978 with 22.5 percent growth, according to Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜), deputy director-general of the ministry’s statistics department.
Factory output for the first 10 months jumped 28.2 percent from the same period last year.
Manufacturing industry production — which accounts for over 90 percent of Taiwan’s factory output and includes the electronics, chemicals, machinery as well as food and textile sectors — grew 15.3 percent last month.
Output of electronic components — a major sub-sector in the manufacturing industry — was up 17.5 percent and those for machinery rose 62.1 percent, which marked the highest rise among all sub-sectors.
“The rising yen prompted other companies to switch orders to Taiwan,” Tsai said of the machinery growth.
The ministry said on Friday that Taiwan’s export orders — an indication of orders to come in the next one to three months — hit a record US$35.65 billion last month, up 12.3 percent from a year earlier, amid the backdrop of strong international demand for Taiwanese electronic components.
The ministry yesterday also released local consumption figures for last month.
Total sales for the wholesale, retail as well as food and beverage sectors hit a record NT$1.21 trillion (US$39.8 billion) amid strong domestic consumption.
It represented a rise of 7.9 percent from last year and is up 3.2 percent from September, according to the department’s figures.
Combined sales for the first 10 months increased 10.5 percent to NT$11.31 trillion.
The department singled out the record revenues of NT$31.3 billion for the department store sector last month, as two new stores — Uni-President Hankyu Department Store (統一阪急百貨) and Momo Department Store (Momo 百貨) — sought to bring in customers.
Citigroup economist Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂) said yesterday in a report that the increase in factory output last month was better than the bank’s forecast, while the local consumption numbers also showed stronger growth last month.
“Overall, better export, industrial production and commercial sales data indicate a strong start in the fourth-quarter GDP growth that will likely stay sequentially positive,” he wrote.
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