As Chinese companies stocked up on electronics products ahead of an expected Lunar New Year buying spree, Taiwan’s factory output set yet another record high last month by expanding 19.4 percent from a year ago, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The index of industrial output hit 130.34 last month, up 3.1 percent from October. This was the sixth time that factory output reached record level this year, with five straight record highs from March to July.
Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜), deputy director general of the ministry’s statistics department, said the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls in early February next year, has prompted companies to build up their inventories and that has kept Taiwanese factories busy.
“Economic growth in China has surpassed that of Europe and the US,” Tsai said, adding that the effect impacted Taiwanese factories, which in the past saw highest output in August and October for the Christmas shopping spree.
Now the highest output has occurred in November, marking a shift of dependence toward Lunar New Year’s effect, she said.
Factory output for this month is expected to post 25 percent growth year-on-year, while output for the year looks set to expand more than 20 percent from last year, which would be another record high.
The record was set in 1971, when industrial output grew by 23.4 percent, while the next-highest figure was in 1978 with 22.5 percent growth.
Factory output for the first 11 months jumped 27.3 percent from the same period last year.
Manufacturing industry production — which accounts for more than 90 percent of Taiwan’s total factory output, and includes the electronics, chemicals, machinery as well as food and textile sectors — grew 29 percent for the first 11 months.
Output of electronic components — a major manufacturing industry sub-sector — was up 44.3 percent and those for machinery rose 62.5 percent — marking the highest rise among all manufacturing sub-sectors.
The ministry said on Monday that export orders hit its second-highest recorded level of US$35.74 billion last month, up 14.3 percent from a year earlier, amid the backdrop of strong international demand for Taiwanese consumer electronics.
The ministry yesterday released consumption figures for last month. Total sales for the wholesale, retail as well as food and beverage sectors totaled NT$1.17 trillion (US$39.2 billion) amid strong domestic consumption. That was a 5.9 percent increase from last year, but a drop of 3.2 percent from October, the figures show.
Combined sales for the first 11 months rose 10 percent to NT$12.47 trillion.
Tsai said a lower unemployment rate, higher salaries and the rising stock market were all factors pushing up local consumption.
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
RSS