The nation’s export orders contracted 5.8 percent year-on-year to US$33.73 billion last month, less than the government’s estimated fall of 7 percent, due to a pickup in demand for smartphones and notebooks, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The figure marks the 14th consecutive month of falls, but the pace eased from April’s 11.1 percent fall.
On a monthly basis, export orders expanded 1.7 percent from NT$33.16 billion (US$1.03 billion) in April, the data showed.
“The increasing demand for smartphones and 4G handset chips in emerging markets was the main stimulus,” ministry Department of Statistics Director-General Lin Lee-jen (林麗貞) said at a news conference.
Lin said improving demand for notebooks from Europe also helped shrink the decline last month.
Orders for information and communications technology and electronic goods, the pillars of overall export orders, climbed 3.6 percent and 1.9 percent month-on-month respectively, the data showed.
The year-on-year decline for information and communications terchnology and electronic products moderated to 3.5 percent and 3.1 percent respectively, from an almost 10 percent drop in April, the data showed.
Orders for stainless steel grew 2.6 percent monthly, but dropped 4.1 percent annually last month, as customers placed more orders before an anticipated increase in average selling prices, Lin said.
Lin said the demand and selling prices of panel products improved last month, raising overall export orders for precision instruments by 3.5 percent from April.
That marks the third consecutive monthly increase for precision instrument orders, indicating improving demand for the nation’s panel products, Lin said.
However, due to the persistently low global crude oil prices, orders for petrochemical products dropped 8.3 percent annually and 4.2 percent monthly to US$1.56 billion last month, Lin sid.
By destination, the year-on-year declines in orders from the US, Europe, China and Hong Kong, last month all narrowed to low single-digit percentages from the double-digit percentages recorded in April, Lin said.
“The improvements were supported by increasing orders for information and communications technology and electronic goods,” Lin said.
The US remained the largest export order destination, with orders falling 4 percent annually, but expanding 0.1 percent monthly to US$9.39 billion last month, ministry data showed.
Orders from China and Hong Kong totaled US$8.41 billion last month, falling 6.4 percent annually, but climbing 2.9 percent from April, the data showed.
Export orders are to continue to expand this month from last month’s US$33.73 billion, on the back of improving demand for smartphones, stainless steel and panel products, Lin said, citing the ministry’s monthly survey of local makers.
“Export orders will be from US$33.8 billion to US$34.3 billion this month, based on the survey,” Lin said.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS