Export orders grew for a 16th straight month annually to US$53.75 billion last month, the Ministry of Economic Affairs reported yesterday.
The figure was up 2.8 percent from May and 31.1 percent from a year earlier, it added.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, robust global demand for tech products and high commodity prices made last month’s orders the strongest June level on record, Department of Statistics Director Huang Yu-ling (黃于玲) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: CNA
For the second quarter, export orders reached US$160.96 billion, up 8 percent from the first quarter and 35.9 percent from a year earlier. That brought orders for the first half of the year to US$309.92 billion, an annual increase of 39.2 percent, the highest for the same period on record, the ministry said.
“The stay-at-home economy has not abated,” Huang said. “The demand for laptops, graphic cards and storage devices remains strong.”
Orders for information and communications technology products grew 6.9 percent year-on-year to US$13.89 billion last month, and those for electronics items increased 36.5 percent to US$16.79 billion, bolstered by demand for 5G and high-performance computing applications, the ministry said.
Orders for optical products expanded 42.7 percent year-on-year to US$2.74 billion last month, driven by demand from China and Hong Kong, it said.
Taiwanese exporters also benefited from the US and EU infrastructure projects, as base metal orders surged 81.8 percent to US$3.32 billion and orders for mechanical products advanced 40 percent to US$2.26 billion, the ministry said.
Orders for plastics and petrochemicals rose 57.5 percent to US$2.6 billion last month, thanks to rising oil prices and increasing demand, while chemical product orders expanded 43.2 percent to US$1.87 billion, it said.
The US was again the biggest source of export orders, which rose 7.8 percent month-on-month and 24 percent year-on-year to US$16.48 billion, it said.
China followed at US$14.43 billion, up 1.5 percent month-on-month and 36.7 percent year-on-year, and the EU came in third with orders of US$9.28 billion, down 2.5 percent month-on-month, but up 24.3 percent year-on-year.
While the pandemic remains an uncertainty, the steady increase in global vaccinations and a pickup in basic infrastructure projects lend confidence to a recovery, Huang said.
“The pace of global economic recovery is picking up, and we are entering into the second half of the year, the strong season for consumer electronic products,” Huang said. “We can expect export orders to stay strong.”
A recent survey of Taiwanese businesses showed that 20.5 percent expect fewer orders for this month, 19.5 percent expect more orders and 60.1 percent expect orders to be flat, the ministry said.
The ministry forecast export orders for this month of US$52.7 billion to US$54.2 billion, down 1.9 percent to 0.9 percent month-on-month, but up 15.7 to 18.9 percent year-on-year.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
Taiwan-based GlobalWafers Co., the world’s third largest silicon wafer supplier, on Wednesday opened a 12-inch silicon wafer plant in Novara, northern Italy - the country’s most advanced silicon wafer facility to date. The new plant, coded “Fab300,” was launched by GlobalWafers’ Italian subsidiary MEMC Electronics Materials S.p.A at a ceremony attended by Taiwan’s representative to Italy Vincent Tsai (蔡允中), MEMC President Marco Sciamanna and Novara Mayor Alessandro Canelli. GlobalWafers Chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said the investment marked a milestone in the company’s expansion in Europe, adding that the Novara plant will be powered entirely by renewable energy - a reflection of its
RSS