Export orders rose 21.4 percent year-on-year to US$55.3 billion last month, marking the best July figure ever, statistics from the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday showed.
Last month’s figure beat the expectations of the ministry, which predicted another robust annual growth this month.
Export orders are forecast to reach US$55 billion to US$56.5 billion this month, up 20.9 percent to 24.2 percent on an annual basis, the ministry said.
Last month also represented the 17th month of consecutive annual growth for orders. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for Taiwanese tech products has boomed due to work-from-home and distance-learning trends.
The demand for electronics has not weakened, and has been complemented by a recovery in demand among traditional sectors, such as chemicals, basic metals and plastic products, ministry data showed.
“With global recovery strengthening, we are seeing strong demand for both high-tech and traditional sectors,” Department of Statistics Director Huang Yu-ling (黃于玲) told a videoconference.
Orders for electronics and information and communications technology products grew 22.3 and 4.4 percent respectively, while orders for basic metals jumped 64.7 percent year-on-year, ministry data showed.
Orders for chemical products surged 42.3 percent and those for plastic products soared 44 percent, the data showed.
Despite rapidly increasing vaccination rates in major economies such as the US and the EU, a COVID-19 resurgence due to the spread of the Delta variant, especially in Southeast Asia, is a potential cause for concern for Taiwanese manufacturers.
In the past three months, 240,000 new cases were confirmed in Vietnam alone.
“Of the 98 companies with manufacturing facilities in the affected regions that answered our survey, 33 had to temporarily suspend taking orders,” Huang said.
“However, the overall number affected is still small and many companies have the ability to transfer orders to their Chinese or other plants,” she said.
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