Taiwan’s export orders totaled a record US$57.78 billion last month, up 12 percent month-on-month and 29.7 percent year-on-year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
The better-than-expected results were boosted by “a certain recently released smartphone product by an international company,” Department of Statistics Director Huang Yu-ling (黃于玲) told a news conference in Taipei.
Apple Inc, which used to release its new iPhone models in September, delayed this year’s launch to Oct. 23 due to production disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: Bloomberg
“We can’t give exact figures, but it’s quite clear that the smartphone launch in question has had a very substantial effect,” Huang said. “It partially explains why 59.2 percent of the goods supplied by Taiwanese exporters were manufactured abroad,” up 3.3 percentage points year-on-year.
The trend of local manufacturers moving their production back home is “here to stay,” but iPhones are mostly made by Taiwanese contract manufacturers in China, she said.
Export orders for information and communication technology (ICT) products hit a record high of US$20.82 billion, up 39.4 percent year-on-year, on the back of seasonal demand for laptops and tablets, as well as the iPhone launch, Huang said.
Orders for electronic products also set a record of US$17.19 billion, up 37.8 percent year-on-year, while optical product orders were US$2.37 billion, up 27.8 percent year-on-year, ministry data showed.
Non-tech industries also posted growth in orders last month, with plastic product orders increasing 20 percent year-on-year to US$2.14 billion, basic metal orders advancing 25.2 percent to US$2.43 billion and mechanical products climbing 11.5 percent to US$1.86 billion.
Only orders for chemical products dipped on depressed international oil prices, falling 4.4 percent to US$1.53 billion, the data showed.
The US accounted for US$18.13 billion of all export orders, up 30.6 percent annually, while US$12.83 billion of orders came from China and Hong Kong, up 23.3 percent, and US$14.39 billion of orders came from Europe, up 50.2 percent.
In the first 11 months of this year, total export orders increased 7.3 percent year-on-year to US$473.11 billion, the ministry said.
Export orders are forecast to total US$56.5 billion to NT$58 billion next month, which would translate into a 2.2 percent monthly decline and a 29 percent annual increase on the low end of the estimate, and a 0.4 percent monthly increase and a 32.5 percent annual increase on the high end, the ministry said.
This means for the whole year estimated export orders would be US$529.7 billion to US$531.1 billion, or annual growth of 9.3 to 9.6 percent, the ministry said.
“While this rate of growth in export orders is not exactly historic, it is remarkable that we are able to accomplish this in a pandemic year,” Huang said.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
RSS