Exports last month surged 30.2 percent year-on-year to a record US$41.58 billion, as a global recovery propped up demand in almost all product categories and selling prices increased, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday.
Outbound shipments might again top US$40 billion this month, making the current quarter the strongest in history as the COVID-19 pandemic and digital transformation reshape consumer behavior and product supply chains, Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) told a news conference in Taipei.
Last month’s “export data are surprisingly impressive and would remain strong this month,” Tsai said, adding that exporters hiked selling prices to reflect rising raw material costs.
Photo: CNA
The unprecedented showing also had to do with holiday demand and delayed shipments from previous months, Tsai said.
Electronics shipments grew 26.6 percent to US$15.93 billion, while exports of information and communications technology products gained 19.5 percent to US$5.69 billion, the ministry’s monthly report said.
Several electronics suppliers have said that they have more orders than they can digest due to component shortages and chaos in the shipping sector.
Exports picked up across the world as rising COVID-19 vaccination rates gave countries confidence to lift lockdowns.
That explained why shipments to Europe swelled 56 percent and inflated 39.2 percent to the US, the report said.
Exports to ASEAN markets jumped 31.2 percent and rose 29.1 percent to Japan, it said.
China also increased purchases of Taiwanese goods by 18.9 percent year-on-year, it said.
However, shipments of optical devices dropped 3 percent, although domestic flat-panel providers said that seasonal price corrections would soon end.
Exports of non-tech products advanced 20 to 164.6 percent, as price hikes benefited mineral products the most, the report said.
Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), Taiwan’s largest industrial conglomerate, this week said that sales would weaken in the next three months, with the Lunar New Year to cut working hours and uncertainty escalating due to the quickly spreading Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.
Imports spiked 33.8 percent to US$35.86 billion, the second-highest in history, driven by aggressive demand from local semiconductor companies to upgrade and expand capacity with equipment abroad, Tsai said.
Imports of semiconductor capital equipment soared 36.1 percent to US$2.7 billion, offsetting a steep retreat in imports of vehicles and smartphones, the report said.
Taiwan last month had a trade surplus of US$5.71 billion, an 11.1 percent increase from a year earlier.
For the first 11 months of this year, exports expanded 30 percent to US$93.61 billion, while imports grew 33.8 percent to US$87.37 billion, the ministry said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS