Taiwan’s exports last month clocked another 12 percent upturn from a year earlier to a record US$33 billion, as 5G smartphones and other new technology applications ramped up business for local component suppliers, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said yesterday.
The growth momentum might gather further strength this month with increases from 19 percent to 23 percent, aided by three more working days in January this year compared with last year, the ministry said.
“The factors driving the growth look sustainable and the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday will also lend support,” Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Wu Chi-lun, Taipei Times
Demand for 5G communication, high-performance chips, as well as remote-working and education devices remain high, Tsai said, adding that iPhone 12 sales proved stronger than expected.
Taiwan is home to suppliers of chips, camera lenses, casing, touch panels, battery packs and assemblers to Apple Inc.
Meanwhile, strong demand for laptops, servers, and other information and communication technology (ICT) products showed no sign of receding as COVID-19 infections spike around the world, Tsai said.
Electronics exports soared 22.2 percent to US$12.76 billion, while shipments of ICT products gained 17.6 percent to US$4.77 billion, jointly contributing about 50 percent to overall exports, ministry data showed.
Optical products, mainly flat panels, posted the fastest advance of 27 percent year-on-year, Tsai said.
Demand for non-technology products also showed a healthy recovery — with shipments of plastic, chemical and base metal products gaining 2 percent to 15.5 percent, the ministry said, adding that mineral and textile products continued to buck the trend, slumping up to 52.4 percent year-on-year.
Import data showed a positive cyclical movement for the second straight month, even though the increase tapered to 0.9 percent, giving Taiwan a large trade surplus of US$5.76 billion that has more than doubled year-on-year, Tsai said.
Imports of capital equipment dropped 6.4 percent due to the timing of equipment arrivals, she said.
Exports rose 11.7 percent year-on-year to US$97.21 billion last quarter, stronger than the November forecast of 7.8 percent by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Tsai said.
For the whole of last year, outbound shipments hit a record high of US$345.28 billion, representing a 4.9 percent increase from a year earlier, outperforming rivals around the world, Tsai said.
Imports grew a mild 3.2 percent to US$78.72 billion last quarter, allowing for a slim gain for the whole year of 0.3 percent to US$286.49 billion, she said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS