Exports last month fell 10.4 percent from a year earlier to US$38.73 billion as demand for most products weakened, even though sales of products related to artificial intelligence (AI) gained traction, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Outbound shipments have contracted for 11 consecutive months and would register negative growth of 5 to 10 percent this month as robust sales of AI-related products are not strong enough to reverse poor demand for other technology products, the ministry said.
“Demand for electronic components, mainly chips, failed to show noticeable improvement amid a global economic slowdown, explaining why major local technology firms have trimmed their revenue outlook for this year,” Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) said, naming Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) as examples.
Photo: CNA
Exports of electronics shrank 7.9 percent to US$15.61 billion, with semiconductor shipments softening 6.2 percent to US$14.55 billion, the ministry’s monthly report showed.
Taiwan is home to the world’s largest suppliers of electronics used in smartphones, PCs, big-data analysis equipment and AI applications.
Domestic and international customers largely adopted a cautious inventory strategy, placing rush or short orders to deal with economic uncertainty, Tsai said.
Information and communications technology (ICT) products were the only bright spot, with shipments soaring 54.1 percent to a record US$99.07 billion as global cloud service providers aggressively bought graphics processing units and servers to power AI applications, Tsai said.
Local suppliers are upbeat that the momentum would continue into the next quarter, she said.
Amid AI hype, ICT products have gained importance among exports, accounting for 23.4 percent of overall shipments last month and 16.2 percent in the first seven months of this year, Tsai said.
Sales of notebook computers also appeared to have come out of the woods after several quarters of inventory adjustments, she said.
Demand for ICT products was particularly strong in Europe, with outbound shipments to Europe rising 24 percent to a record US$4.65 billion last month, Tsai said.
The pace of decline in exports eased to single-digit percentages in ASEAN markets, Japan and the US, but remained in the double digits for shipments to China at 16.3 percent, she said.
The world’s second-largest economy has not reached a desirable level of recovery after ditching COVID-19 restrictions late last year, she added.
Exports of non-technology products fared worse, with slumps of between 22.1 percent and 57.3 percent from their year-earlier levels, Tsai said.
Imports fell 20.9 percent year-on-year to US$30.25 billion last month, giving Taiwan a big trade surplus of US$8.48 billion, suggesting a 70 percent increase year-on-year, the ministry said.
That is because local firms remained cautious in buying capital equipment as well as agricultural and industrial materials for export purposes, Tsai said.
In the first seven months, cumulative exports fell 16.9 percent year-on-year to US$240.81 billion, while imports dropped 20.2 percent to US$205.89 billion, the ministry said.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS