The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month fell deeper into contraction territory, as declines in new orders and production sharpened, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday.
The index slid 1.5 points to 41.3 last month.
PMI data aim to gauge the health of the manufacturing industry, with values over 50 indicating expansion and scores below the threshold suggesting contraction.
Photo courtesy of the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research
Inventory has returned to normal levels, but companies by and large remain conservative about purchasing activity due to poor order visibility, CIER president Yeh Chun-hsien (葉俊顯) told a news conference in Taipei.
The cautious sentiment has a lot to do with gloomy economic prospects in the US and unease over falling raw material prices, Yeh said.
Against this backdrop, companies are sticking to conservative business management practices, he said.
The critical subindex on new business orders shed 6.3 points to 34.3, the worst since the launch of the PMI survey in July 2012, the Taipei-based institute said.
The gauge on inventory dropped another 0.6 points to 45.3, while the measure on customers’ inventory weakened 0.2 points to 44.7 and factory production shed 1.6 points to 36.9, the monthly survey showed.
Academia Sinica economics researcher Kamhon Kan (簡錦漢) said that operating conditions would continue to flounder, as the market needs more time to assimilate the impact of the US Federal Reserve’s drastic interest rate hikes.
Furthermore, China has yet to post a healthy recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the shock of bank failures in the US and Europe lingers, Kan said.
That explains why the reading on the six-month business outlook lost 6.7 points to 38.2, with all sectors voicing bleak views, the survey showed.
However, Taiwanese electronics suppliers might benefit from the burgeoning generative artificial intelligence applications and the upcoming release of new iPhone models, Kan said.
Taiwan is a major supplier of electronics used in smartphones, servers and artificial intelligence applications.
Purchasing activity was stable at 52 for non-manufacturing sectors, although it slowed slightly from 55.8 one month earlier, a separate survey showed.
Service providers continued to see a pickup in business after the government removed COVID-19 restrictions, even though shipping, warehousing and logistics facilities proved the exception due to their reliance on exporters, it showed.
Non-manufacturing sectors have mixed views about business prospects, with restaurants, hotels and retailers remaining upbeat, but all other sectors expecting a downturn, it said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained