Sales in the retail, and the food and beverage sectors in the first two months of this year reached the highest levels for the period on record, as extended holidays boosted consumer traffic at physical stores and businesses promoted sales during the Lunar New Year holiday, data released yesterday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed.
The ministry said in a report that retail sales climbed 1.5 percent from a year earlier to NT$813.7 billion (US$25.41 billion) in the first two months, meeting its forecast of a 0.6 to 1.9 percent increase.
Department stores, big-box stores and convenience stores, as well as e-commerce and mail-order operators, drink and tobacco retailers, and fabric and clothing stores were the main drivers in sales during the period, rising from 5.3 to 8.1 percent.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
However, sales of cars, motorcycles and auto parts fell 15 percent as many consumers still maintained a wait-and-see attitude on large purchases, while retail fuel sales also dropped 8.4 percent due to falling crude oil prices, the report said.
Food and beverage sales grew 4.6 percent in the period to NT$197 billion on across-the-board growth at restaurants, beverage outlets and catering service providers, exceeding the ministry’s prediction of a 2.1 to 3.4 percent growth, it said.
Meanwhile, sales in the wholesale sector in the first two months increased 20.1 percent from a year earlier to NT$2.57 trillion, also the highest for the period, as strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing devices boosted shipments of servers, memory chips and related electronic components, the ministry said.
However, aside from industries benefiting from the AI boom, many wholesale businesses are still facing challenges, with wholesale revenue of the automotive industry down 10.9 percent due to conservative market sentiment and that of building materials declining 9.5 percent amid weak steel demand, it said.
The ministry released the data for the first two months to factor out the effects of the week-long Lunar New Year holiday — which was in February this year, but fell mostly in January last year — when many businesses were closed.
For this month, the ministry forecast retail sales would show between a 0.9 percent drop to a 2.1 percent gain from March last year to range between NT$389.4 billion and NT$401.2 billion, while food and beverage sales are predicted to increase 2.2 to 5.2 percent to between NT$87.6 billion and NT$90.1 billion.
Sales in the wholesale sector this month are projected to rise 16.1 to 19.1 percent year-on-year to between NT$1.38 trillion and NT$1.41 trillion, driven by robust AI and cloud services-related demand, the ministry said.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
AMAZING ABUNDANCE: Elon Musk has announced plans for a new facility in Texas which would manufacture chips for Tesla and SpaceX to use in robotics and AI Elon Musk said his Terafab project — a grand plan to eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and space data centers — would be built in Austin and jointly run by Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX). Musk, the chief executive officer of the two companies, said he would start off with an “advanced technology fab” in Austin that would have all of the equipment necessary to make chips of any kind. The project would call for one day supporting 1 terawatt (TW) of computing power per year, the amount Musk expects the companies to
RSS