Taiwan’s exports last month grew 29.2 percent year-on-year to a record US$39.65 billion, as demand for electronics used in digital transformation and new technology applications increased, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Non-tech sectors also benefited from inventory replenishment demand, fueled by a continuing global recovery that allowed their growth to be faster than technology products, Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) said.
The results outperformed her estimated gain of 23 to 27 percent despite fewer working days due to the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Photo: CNA
“All major product categories saw solid gains, although optical devices, mainly camera lenses used in smartphones and flat panels for laptops and TVs, only increased 4.8 percent, the slowest in 14 months,” Tsai said.
Demand from remote working and schooling lessened as vaccination rates improved around the world, she said, adding that China’s tightened controls of non-school educational facilities helped dampen buying interest.
That accounted for relatively lackluster showings for shipments of optical and memory products, as some suppliers opted to arrange annual maintenance of spare capacity.
Overall, exports of electronics rose 26.8 percent to US$16.58 billion, thanks to record chip shipments that swelled 27.6 percent year-on-year to US$15.11 billion, Tsai said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the sole chip supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhone series, yesterday posted NT$152.69 billion in revenue for last month, the first rise above the NT$150 billion mark and representing a 19.7 percent upswing to a new high.
Shipments of information and communications products jumped 22.8 percent to US$5.4 billion, the ministry’s report showed.
Exports of base metal, plastic, chemical and mineral products posted steeper gains of between 32.5 and 139.8 percent from a year earlier as the US and Europe sought a return to normalcy despite ongoing COVID-19 infections.
Imports rose 40.4 percent to US$33.21 billion, as local semiconductor firms aggressively purchased capital equipment to meet business needs and upgrade technologies, the report said.
That gave Taiwan a trade surplus of US$6.45 billion, a decline of 8.6 percent from a year earlier, it said.
For the third quarter, exports advanced 30.1 percent, slightly missing the government’s August projection of 30.42 percent. Imports increased 42.5 percent, beating the forecast of 38.7 percent, the report said.
Exports are expected to remain vibrant this month with an increase of 21 to 25 percent and are likely to exceed US$40 billion, despite a high base last year, Tsai said.
For the first nine months, exports grew 30.7 percent to US$324.07 billion, while imports gained 33.3 percent to US$276.39 billion, the ministry said.
DIVERSIFICATION: The chip designer expects new non-smartphone products to be available next year or in 2025 as it seeks new growth engines to broaden its portfolio MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it expects non-mobile phone chips, such as automotive chips, to drive its growth beyond 2025, as it pursues diversification to create a more balanced portfolio. The Hsinchu-based chip designer said it has counted on smartphone chips, power management chips and chips for other applications to fuel its growth in the past few years, but it is developing new products to continue growing. “Our future growth drivers, of course, will be outside of smartphones,” MediaTek chairman Rick Tsai (蔡明介) told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting in Hsinchu City. “As new products would be available next year
At a red-brick factory in the German port city of Hamburg, cocoa bean shells go in one end and out the other comes an amazing black powder with the potential to counter climate change. The substance, dubbed biochar, is produced by heating the cocoa husks in an oxygen-free room to 600°C. The process locks in greenhouse gases and the final product can be used as a fertilizer, or as an ingredient in the production of “green” concrete. While the biochar industry is still in its infancy, the technology offers a novel way to remove carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere, experts have said. Biochar could
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) shares yesterday rallied 2 percent on the local stock market after Nvidia Corp said the contract chipmaker would be the sole supplier of its latest graphics processing chip, defusing speculation that Intel Corp would get a share of the orders. TSMC’s share price climbed to NT$562, snapping a three-day losing streak. It outperformed the benchmark index’s 1.18 percent gain. Net purchases by foreign institutional investors yesterday totaled 8.37 million shares, reversing net sales of 2.9 million shares on Thursday. The rebound follows Nvidia’s announcement that its latest artificial intelligence graphics processing unit (GPU), codenamed H100, would
Taiwan is expected to be the third-largest market for Singapore-based DBS Group Holdings Ltd, after DBS Bank Taiwan (星展台灣) completes its acquisition of Citibank Taiwan Ltd’s (台灣花旗) consumer banking business in August, a bank executive said yesterday. Taiwan would rank after only Singapore and Hong Kong in terms of profit contribution to DBS, followed by China, India and Indonesia, DBS Taiwan general manager Ng Sier Han (黃思翰) told a media briefing in Taipei. DBS Bank Taiwan expects to retain all 2.77 million Citibank Taiwan cardholders and help them to transition to DBS Taiwan cards over the next 12 months, Ng said. The bank
RSS