Export orders last month shrank 24.9 percent from a year earlier to US$44.18 billion, as demand in all major product categories from all major trading destinations declined by double-digit percentages, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
It was the 10th consecutive month of contraction in the critical economic bellwether, boding ill for customs-cleared exports in the next one to three months.
The situation looks set to worsen this month, as firms with negative views outnumbered those with a positive outlook, the ministry said, citing an internal survey.
Photo: CNA
A majority, 57.5 percent, of the respondents are expecting business to remain flat, the ministry added.
Export orders from the eurozone registered the steepest retreat of 44.2 percent, followed by a 23.6 percent plunge in US orders, the ministry found. It attributed the downtrend to drastic monetary tightening in advanced economies, which has curtailed consumption of electronic gadgets.
Export orders from China and Hong Kong shed 19.7 percent year-on-year last month, as the economic recovery in the world’s second-largest economy turned out to be slower than expected, the ministry said.
Orders from Japan fell 17 percent last month, but dropped by a moderate 3.1 percent in ASEAN markets that have benefited from the global supply chain realignment as firms shift manufacturing facilities away from China, it said.
By product breakdown, export orders for information, communications and technology products tumbled 27.4 percent from a year earlier to US$12.3 billion last month, as end-market demand for notebook computers, smartphones, servers and graphics cards continued to take hard hits, the ministry said.
Export orders for electronics — including semiconductors, memory chips and printed circuit boards — slumped 22 percent to US$14.6 billion, as inventory adjustments turned out to be deeper and longer than expected, it said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the sole iPhone chip supplier, yesterday confirmed that it expects inventory corrections to last into the fourth quarter, as its customers adopt a cautious approach to deal with slowing business.
The picture is bleaker for non-tech products, with the pace of inventory correction still exceeding 30 percent for chemical and plastics products, the ministry found.
In the second quarter, export orders decreased 20.4 percent from a year earlier, the ministry said, adding that the annual decline reached 20.8 percent in the first six months of the year.
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