Sales by the retail and food and beverage sectors last month hit the highest March levels on record, while the wholesale sector saw sales decline for a fifth straight month from a year earlier, the Ministry of Economic Affairs reported on Monday.
Retail sales came in at NT$368.5 billion (US$12.01 billion) last month, an annual increase of 7.1 percent, while food and beverage sales totaled NT$76.6 billion, up 9.8 percent year-on-year, the report said.
The figures beat the ministry’s growth forecasts of 1.6 percent for retail and 4.6 percent for food and beverage.
Photo: CNA
The increase in retail sales was mainly driven by sales of vehicles, motorbikes and related components, which soared 27.9 percent from a year earlier.
Other growth drivers were rising consumption of food, beverage and tobacco products by international tourists, higher demand for pharmaceuticals, cosmetic and skincare products amid the easing of COVID-19 restrictions, and robust online shopping due to effective sales campaigns, the report said.
As for food and beverage, the ministry said that catering service providers reported a 46.1 percent annual increase in sales due to steady demand for in-flight meals as air travel recovered.
In addition, restaurant sales rose 9.3 percent year-on-year, as consumers were more willing to spend on dining and businessowners continued to expand, while beverage sales increased 3.2 percent on the back of new product launches, it added.
In the first quarter of the year, retail sales totaled NT$1.11 trillion, up 5.3 percent from a year earlier and 4.4 percent from the previous three months, which the ministry attributed to more people returning home over the Lunar New Year holiday, as well as rising consumption by international travelers following the easing of border controls.
Food and beverage sales also rose 17.2 percent year-on-year to a record NT$254.8 billion in the first quarter, outpacing the previous quarter’s 13.3 percent annual growth, ministry data showed.
Meanwhile, the wholesale sector remained sluggish, affected by weak global macroeconomics, which led to high inventories and slow demand for domestic machinery and equipment, building materials and chemicals, the ministry said.
Overall sales dropped 13.3 percent from a year earlier to NT$1.02 trillion last month, it said.
For the first three months of the year, wholesale revenue fell 11.6 percent from a year earlier to NT$2.79 trillion, it said.
For this month, the ministry forecast that retail sales would rise between 6.2 and 9.2 percent annually to between NT$365.3 billion and NT$375.6 billion, while food and beverage sales would increase by 24.6 to 27.6 percent to between NT$77.3 billion and NT$79.1 billion.
Wholesale revenue is expected to fall for a sixth consecutive month by 9.5 to 12.5 percent to between NT$931.8 billion and NT$963.7 billion, the ministry said.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS