Export orders last month climbed 5.2 percent annually to US$35.97 billion, outperforming the government’s estimate mainly due to persistent robust demand for information technology and communication (ICT) products, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The result beat the ministry’s forecast of 3.8 percent annual growth and represented the sixth consecutive month of annual expansion, the ministry’s data showed.
“Smartphones, high-end notebook computers, servers and storage devices were the main growth drivers,” Department of Statistics Director-General Lin Lee-jen (林麗貞) told a news conference.
On an annual basis, orders for ICT and electronics products — the pillar of export orders — rose 6.7 percent and 1.4 percent to US$10.55 billion and US$9.46 billion respectively, the data showed.
Lin said continued robust demand for TV panels drove orders for precision instruments to US$2.02 billion last month, increasing as much as 17.6 percent from the same period last year.
She said that rising crude oil and raw material prices lent support to the orders for steel, petrochemicals, and plastics and rubber products last month.
Crude oil prices last month climbed more than 90 percent from the same period last year, Lin added.
The US remained Taiwan’s largest export destination, with orders growing 4.8 percent year-on-year to US$10.15 billion on the back of increasing demand for ICT products, she said.
Orders from China and Hong Kong also added 5.5 percent to US$8.71 billion from a year ago, she said.
Orders from Japan grew 5.3 percent annually to US$1.97 billion, ending 28 months of annual decline as the impact from a Japanese TV and notebook maker’s exit from the market came to an end, Lin said.
Lin declined to name the Japanese company.
However, it is known that Toshiba Corp has over the past two years sold its TV business in North America and Europe, and reduced TV manufacturing orders to Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶).
Toshiba last year also left the consumer notebook market, cutting its consumer notebook orders to Pegatron Corp (和碩), Compal, Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) and Wistron Corp (緯創).
Toshiba’s moves affected export orders from Japan, leading to 28 consecutive months of annual decline in orders, an official at the ministry, who declined to be named, told the Taipei Times.
Lin said the ministry expects export orders to increase between 12 percent and 15.7 percent annually to US$31 billion and 32 billion respectively.
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