Export orders last month expanded 30.5 percent year-on-year to US$70.22 billion, the eighth straight month of double-digit percentage growth and the highest ever for a single month, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Last month’s figure increased 17 percent from the previous month, and exceeded the ministry’s estimate of US$64 billion to US$66 billion.
Stronger server orders drove the stronger-than-expected result, Department of Statistics Director-General Huang Wei-jie (黃偉傑) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA
The ministry in a report said orders in the third quarter rose 23.8 percent year-on-year to US$190.69 billion, surpassing its forecast of US$184.5 billion.
In the first nine months of the year, export orders grew 22.3 percent to US$524.37 billion, also the largest for the period, it said.
Export orders this month are expected to fall 2.3 percent month-on-month to US$68.6 billion, or rise 0.5 percent to US$70.6 billion, the ministry said.
On an annual basis, orders are forecast to increase by 23.7 to 27.3 percent, it said.
Order momentum is expected to remain strong this quarter, supported by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products and emerging technologies, Huang said.
Export orders could hit a record high this year, surpassing the previous record of US$674.1 billion in 2021, if orders this quarter reach US$149.7 billion, he said.
The optimism comes as worries about US tariffs and US-China trade tensions have eased, while several institutions have raised global economic growth forecasts for this year, he added.
While end-market demand has not rebounded significantly and China’s oversupply continues to weigh on traditional industries, AI remains a key growth driver for Taiwan, Huang said.
Regardless of the talks about an AI bubble, the main uncertainty is the outcome of a Section 232 investigation under the US Trade Expansion Act of 1962, he said.
Last month, export orders for electronic components surged 45.9 percent year-on-year, as AI and high-performance computing drove demand for integrated circuit production, design, packaging and memory orders, the ministry said.
Orders for information and communications technology products rose 33.1 percent, as strong demand from the AI and cloud service industries drove orders for servers and Internet communication products, while optoelectronic product orders climbed 11.2 percent, and machinery orders rose 11.4 percent due to strong demand for automation equipment in semiconductor production, it said.
In traditional industries, export orders for plastic and rubber products fell 10 percent, and orders for base metals dropped 6.3 percent, while chemical products rose 1.4 percent, ministry data showed.
US tariffs have continued to weigh on orders for plastic and rubber products, as well as machine tools, while base metals face low prices and oversupply from China, Huang said.
Chemical product orders rebounded as demand for medicine — especially from Japan — and petrochemical products increased, he added.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
Taiwan-based GlobalWafers Co., the world’s third largest silicon wafer supplier, on Wednesday opened a 12-inch silicon wafer plant in Novara, northern Italy - the country’s most advanced silicon wafer facility to date. The new plant, coded “Fab300,” was launched by GlobalWafers’ Italian subsidiary MEMC Electronics Materials S.p.A at a ceremony attended by Taiwan’s representative to Italy Vincent Tsai (蔡允中), MEMC President Marco Sciamanna and Novara Mayor Alessandro Canelli. GlobalWafers Chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said the investment marked a milestone in the company’s expansion in Europe, adding that the Novara plant will be powered entirely by renewable energy - a reflection of its
RSS