Sales across Taiwan’s food and beverage sector nosedived 22.8 percent year-on-year to NT$47.9 billion (US$1.59 billion) last month, the largest decline in 20 years, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
One of the first victims of the COVID-19 outbreak, the sector has posted double-digit annual declines in sales for three months in a row.
“Restaurants ... took the biggest hit, as the strict anti-epidemic measures implemented have had a notable impact [on revenue],” Department of Statistics Deputy Director-General Wang Shu-chuan (王淑娟) told a news conference in Taipei, referring to seating schemes spacing diners further apart. “Consumers are also less willing to eat out for fear of catching the virus.”
Photo: CNA
The government’s ban on international visitors, which has been in place since March, also dealt a heavy blow to restaurant sales, she said.
Total restaurant sales last month fell 23 percent year-on-year to NT$38.9 billion, ministry data showed. Tea stalls’ sales faced a similar, albeit less severe, decline, contracting 16.6 percent year-on-year to NT$6.6 billion.
With the airline sector practically at a standstill amid a global lockdown, domestic catering services reported a 32.3 percent drop in sales to NT$2.5 billion.
“Hopefully the [food and beverage] sector will soon recover some momentum as the coronavirus situation comes under control,” Wang said.
She forecast an 8 to 15 percent annual decline in food and beverage sales for this month, after taking into account sales linked to Mother’s Day.
The retail sector posted a 10.2 percent year-on-year decrease in sales to NT$277.8 billion, the biggest decline in more than 11 years, ministry data showed.
The lackluster figure was partly due to dwindling sales of general merchandise, which fell 8.5 percent to NT$94.1 billion, as department store sales slumped nationwide.
The drop in international crude oil prices also drove sales of petroleum and chemical products down 39.9 percent year-on-year to NT$13.3 billion, the data showed.
“Most industries [in the retail sector] suffered declines [in sales] last month, with the exception of the e-commerce industry, which grew 19.1 percent year-on-year to a record high of NT$18.3 billion,” Wang said.
The London Metal Exchange (LME) discovered bags of stones instead of the nickel that underpinned a handful of its contracts at a warehouse in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in a revelation that would deliver another blow to confidence in the embattled exchange. The amount of metal represents just 0.14 percent of live nickel inventories on the LME, worth about US$1.3 million at current prices, so the immediate effect on the metals markets is limited. However, the shock announcement has much wider implications. In an industry riddled with scandals, the LME’s contracts are viewed as unquestionably safe. The news that even a few of
Oil on Friday posted its worst weekly loss since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic as banking turmoil poisoned investor sentiment. West Texas Intermediate for April delivery dropped 2.36 percent to US$66.74 per barrel, falling 12.96 percent for the week, the largest drop in almost three years. Brent crude for May delivery fell 2.32 percent to US$72.97, posting a weekly loss of 11.85 percent. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank and troubles at Credit Suisse Group AG drove investors from risk assets, with oil-options covering accelerating the sell-off. “Crude action this week reminded many of how quickly the commodity can be decimated by
Singapore pushed New York off the top spot for the strongest growth in residential rents in the final quarter of last year, fueled by a supply crunch and strong demand. The city-state saw annual rents jump 28 percent in the quarter from a year earlier, Knight Frank said in a report. New York followed with 19 percent growth, while London and Toronto took the third and fourth spots, a survey of prime residential rents across 10 cities showed. Singapore’s soaring rents — driven partly due to a lack of supply of new housing during the COVID-19 pandemic — have been a source of
US-based mobile chip designer Qualcomm Inc yesterday opened a manufacturing engineering and testing center in Hsinchu, expanding its presence in Taiwan. Qualcomm also expects to accelerate its purchases in Taiwan, which already rose to NT$240 billion (US$7.9 billion) last year, up from NT$90 billion five years earlier, and should hit NT$300 billion next year. The center is to provide services for the supply chain in the semiconductor industry, Roawen Chen (陳若文), senior vice president and chief supply chain and operations officer of Qualcomm, said at the facility’s inauguration ceremony. It is Qualcomm’s largest and most advanced engineering testing center outside of the company’s