Industrial production grew at a mild pace last month as the global economic uncertainty slowed demand for Taiwanese electronics products, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Output expanded 3.88 percent year-on-year to 133.32 points last month, slightly up from July’s 3.63 percent expansion, but sharply down compared with the double-digit growth early this year.
Total output for the first eight months of the year rose 8.5 percent from the same period last year to 130.84 points.
Last month’s output was weighed down by a 1.55 percent drop in electronic components production from the previous month, as producers scaled back output amid signs of poor order visibility, Tony Phoo (符銘財), a Taipei-based economist at Standard Chartered Bank, said in a note yesterday.
“Interestingly, production of optroelectronics — mainly panels — picked up in August, but concern was raised that the sector may have to cut back on output in the fourth quarter if hopes of rush orders ahead of the year-end festive season do not materialize,” he wrote.
Overall, the weaker-than-expected industrial output last month, along with weak export orders and the recent market turmoil, may have undermined market confidence, he added.
Export orders — an indicator of outbound shipments in the next one to three months — hit US$36.71 billion last month, up 5.26 percent year-on-year, the ministry said on Tuesday. The growth rate was the lowest since November 2009, dampened by a slump in orders for electronics components and panels.
Manufacturing — which accounts for more than 90 percent of factory output and includes the electronics, chemicals, machinery, food and textile sectors — rose 3.83 percent from a year ago.
Electronic components output expanded by a weak 4.51 percent last month.
“The economic crisis in Europe and the US dampened demand for consumer electronics and therefore affected chip and panel output,” said Huang Ji-shih (黃吉實), director-general of the ministry’s statistics department.
He said manufacturing output for the third and fourth quarters would each rise about 3 percent from the same period last year, implying a weaker-than-usual second half.
Chemicals output slumped 12.08 percent as Formosa Plastics Group’s (台塑集團) shutdown of part of its petrochemical complex in Mailiao (麥寮) because of a spate of industrial safety incidents limited supplies to chemical firms, he said.
The ministry also released last month’s domestic trade figures.
Total revenue for the wholesale, retail as well as the food and beverage sectors was NT$1.21 trillion, up 4.7 percent year-on-year, but down 1.84 percent month-on-month.
Wholesale trade was up 5.18 percent year-on-year to NT$874.1 billion, while retail was up 3.28 percent to NT$305.8 billion. Food and beverage was up 5.47 percent to NT$31.5 billion.
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