Throughput at the nation’s major ports rose more than 6 percent to a new high last year, as exports soared on the back of solid global demand, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said on Thursday last week.
Cargo handled at major international ports — such as Port of Kaohsiung, Port of Keelung, Port of Taichung and Port of Taipei — totaled about 750 million shipping tonnes last year, up 6.7 percent from a year earlier, agency data showed. Shipping tonnage is the measurement used to bill cargo handled by ports.
As the nation’s export performance improved last year, port throughput reversed a year-on-year 3.8 percent decline in 2020 and a 1.4 percent drop in 2019, the DGBAS said.
Photo: CNA
Riding a wave of strong demand for emerging technology products as well as raw materials as part of a global economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan’s exports climbed to a record high, with annual growth of almost 30 percent.
The agency said that cargo loading volume reached about 308 million shipping tonnes last year, up 5.3 percent from a year earlier and accounting for 41.1 percent of total port throughput, while cargo unloading volume was about 442 million shipping tonnes, up 7.7 percent from a year earlier, making up 58.9 percent of the total.
The Port of Kaohsiung handled the largest volume of cargo last year with about 440 million shipping tonnes, which accounted for 58.6 percent of the nation’s total throughput, followed by the Port of Taichung (139 million shipping tonnes, or 18.6 percent), the Port of Taipei (89.67 million shipping tonnes, or 12 percent) and the Port of Keelung (65.46 million shipping tonnes, or 8.7 percent), the DGBAS said.
Last year, Taiwan’s major ports handled 552 million shipping tonnes of container cargo, up 6 percent from a year earlier and accounting for 73.6 percent of the total, the agency said.
Pipeline cargo, including crude oil and other liquefied items, reached 56.95 million shipping tonnes last year to make up 7.6 percent of total throughput, followed by coal (5.4 percent), iron sand (3.7 percent) and iron ore (3.1 percent).
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