The nation’s balance of payments last quarter registered a current account surplus of US$27.22 billion, widening from US$22.24 billion three months earlier, as imports fell faster than exports, although both declined, the central bank said yesterday.
The current account surplus grew US$5.17 billion during the June-to-September period, when trade surpluses reached a new high of US$30.11 billion, central bank research official Tsao Ti-jen (曹體仁) told an online news conference.
The showings had little to do with strong exports, which remained in negative territory, as did imports, Tsao said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Rather, imports tumbled faster than exports amid sharp price corrections in oil and raw material prices, giving Taiwan trade surpluses. Poor imports also had to do with local firms’ conservative approach to inventory management, he said.
At the same time, the services account booked a deficit of US$4.4 billion, accelerating from US$3.29 billion a year earlier, as demand for local cargo shipping services shrank further, while outbound travel expenditures inflated, Tsao said.
Travel expenditures amounted to US$5.13 billion, while travel income stood at US$2.46 billion, driving travel deficits to a peak of US$2.67 billion, he said.
Outbound tourist visits appeared to have reclaimed pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels, but foreign tourist arrivals left room for improvement, Tsao said, adding that the gap would taper off as the world emerges further from COVID-19 disruptions.
Taiwanese hotels have said that visitors from Japan have evidently disappointed thus far, due mainly to a weak Japanese yen.
Foreign investment cooled to US$180 million, its lowest level since the first quarter of 2019, as global investors practiced caution amid lingering restrictive interest rates and economic uncertainty, Tsao said.
Outbound investment posted another record of US$6.09 billion, as local financial institutes and retail investors raised stakes in US bonds and other US dollar-based investment tools that generate higher yields, he said.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
AT HIGH CAPACITY: Three-month order visibility on stable customer demand would push factory utilization to between 80 and 85 percent, Vanguard’s president said Foundry service provider Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) yesterday said it is unable to fully satisfy surging demand for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) servers and data centers, amid an AI infrastructure investment boom that is crowding out production of less advanced chips. Vanguard is facing an “undersupply of chips” made using mature process technologies, due to strong demand for AI products and improving demand from customers in the commercial, industrial and auto sectors, which are digesting excess inventory to a healthier level, company chairman Fang Leuh (方略) told a virtual investors’ conference. However, Vanguard gave a more conservative view on
RSS