Industrial production increased for the third straight month last month, driven primarily by increased demand for chips used in smartphones, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
With handset demand forecast to stay robust through the second half of the year, industrial production is expected to grow sequentially this month, backed by steady economic recovery in the US and Europe, the ministry said.
“The nation’s semiconductor industry has been thriving in recent years because of the rise of mobile devices,” Yang Kuei-hsien (楊貴顯), deputy director-general of the ministry’s statistics department, told a press conference. “Firms that manufacture chips reported an expansion in output last month.”
According to the ministry, the industrial production index climbed to a nine-month high of 104.34 last month, representing an increase of 0.3 percentage points from the previous month and 4.8 percentage points higher than a year ago.
Manufacturing output, which accounts for more than 90 percent of industrial production, rose 0.49 percent month-on-month and 5.21 percent year-on-year last month, buoyed largely by the production of electronic components, PCs, machineries and automobiles, the ministry said.
Bolstered by the roll-out of new smartphones by brands such as China’s Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Taiwan’s HTC Corp (宏達電), electronic components output grew 7.22 last month from a year ago, Yang said.
Growing demand for LED products and increased exports of materials used to make solar panels also helped boost growth in electronics components last month.
Automobile and automotive parts output as a whole gained 21.15 percent last month from a year earlier, mainly because of sales promotions by companies and a recovering global economy, while machinery output expanded 7.98 percent as businesses increased capital investment, Yang said.
Thanks to increased orders from China and the US, PC and optoelectronics output increased 10.43 percent year-on-year last month, Yang said, citing replacement demand for PCs that run Microsoft Corp’s Windows 8 operating system as the main cause.
Solid demand from smartphone vendors for high-end camera lenses was another factor behind the output growth last month, he added.
In a separate report, the ministry said commercial sales — which include wholesale, retail and restaurant sales — grew at their fastest pace in 15 months by 5 percent year-on-year to NT$1.19 trillion (US$39.52 billion) last month. The figure is up 0.5 percent on a monthly basis.
The ministry attributed the annual growth to stronger demand for motorbikes, automobiles, semiconductors and PC peripherals, as well as sales promotions by convenience stores and department stores around Mother’s Day.
The ministry expects sales to post another sequential growth this month, as many convenience stores and department stores have started taking pre-orders for food or other products to be consumed during the Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on June 2.
In the first four months of this year, cumulative commercial sales totaled NT$4.66 trillion, up 2.9 percent from a year earlier, the ministry's statistics showed.
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