Wed, Apr 21, 2010 page12

• Export orders reach all-time high

  BEATING THE CONSENSUS China and Japan were the top contributors to Taiwan’s 43.66 percent growth, with orders of US$9.8 billion and US$4 billion respectively

  • By Jason Tan / STAFF REPORTER
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  Taiwan’s export orders last month expanded 43.66 percent from a year earlier to US$34.39 billion, marking the highest total in the nation’s history on the back of strong demand from Asia-Pacific markets for ­Taiwan-made panels, computers and handsets.

  “China and Japan fueled growth,” Huang Ji-shih (黃吉實), director of the statistics department at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, told a press conference yesterday.

  Orders are an indication of Taiwan’s shipments in the next one to three months to foreign ­markets.

  Last month’s amount beat the previous record set in October 2007, when export orders totaled US$32.2 billion, Huang said.

  Last month’s 43.66 percent growth, for which a rise of 38.64 percent was forecast in a Reuters poll, is the sixth consecutive month of growth as the country emerges from the global financial crisis.

  January orders grew 71.8 percent year-on-year to US$30.4 billion, while those for February rose 36.25 percent to US$27.41 billion.

  “The March result is stronger than the market consensus forecast of 38.0 percent and our expectation of 40.0 percent,” Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂), head economist at Citigroup Taiwan Inc, said yesterday.

  China, which is procuring increasing numbers of Taiwanese LCD panels, ordered US$9.8 billion in products last month, a year-on-year growth of 59.7 percent, while Japan, whose consumers are fond of Taiwanese handsets, saw orders jump 93.6 percent to US$4 billion, Huang said.

  Japan’s total was the highest on record and its growth was the second highest in history, he said.

  Six ASEAN countries — Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam — ordered US$3.2 billion in ­products from Taiwan last month, a growth of 61.8 percent from a year earlier.

  In the first three months of the year, total orders were US$92.17 billion, up 49.31 percent from the same period last year and 28.03 percent higher than the previous quarter’s, ministry statistics showed.

  Cheng said he expected ­second-quarter exports to beat seasonality despite a slowing growth year-on-year, thanks to a better global economic outlook and strong orders industry-wide.

  By product, orders for precision machinery, including panels, saw the strongest growth at 87.8 percent to US$3.24 billion last month.

  Information and communications products — consisting of handsets and notebooks — advanced 40.3 percent from a year earlier to US$8.19 billion last month.

  Electronic wares, which include semiconductors and memory modules, rose 39.1 percent to US$8.27 billion.

  Huang said export orders for this month were “expected to sustain the momentum, but the amount will not surpass those seen in March.”

  Looming hindrances include shortages of raw materials and components and the launch of the Windows 7 operating system, which has not prompted more consumers to replace their older PCs as expected, and customers do not appear to be interested in buying new tech devices at the moment, said Huang.
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