Export orders increased 6.1 percent annually to US$154.04 billion last quarter, the highest in seven quarters, as strong demand for cloud-based applications, servers and artificial intelligence (AI) chips drove last month’s orders to the highest level in about two years, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.
Export orders last month increased 4.6 percent to US$53.79 billion, the largest since October 2022, the ministry said.
The ministry attributed the strong performance to orders for electronic products, mainly semiconductors, which surged 10.5 percent year-on-year to US$19.01 billion on the back of strong demand for AI and high-performance computing devices.
Photo: CNA
Orders for information and communications technology products rose 7 percent to US$17.6 billion amid robust demand for servers and cloud-based devices, it said.
Orders for optronic products increased 3.3 percent to US$1.88 billion last month on rising demand for optical inspection tools used in semiconductor manufacturing, it said, but added that demand for backlight modules used in TV panels declined, casting a dismal outlook for optronic products this month.
“September’s figure only hit the lower end of the ministry’s estimates because of an uneven recovery in end demand,” Department of Statistics Director Huang Yu-ling (黃于玲) said.
Despite strong orders for electronic products, semiconductors in particular, “declines in global crude oil prices dampened orders for plastic and chemical products last month,” Huang said.
Orders for plastic and rubber products contracted 1.1 percent annually to US$1.53 billion last month amid oversupply, while orders for chemical products sank 8.5 percent to US$1.37 billion after the cost of crude oil plummeted 22.2 percent, the ministry’s data showed.
However, orders for base metals climbed 4.3 percent to US$2 billion and those of machinery products and mechanical equipment expanded 3.6 percent to US$1.61 billion, the data showed.
During the first nine months of the year, export orders expanded 3.7 percent year-on-year to US$428.9 billion, the ministry said.
The ministry expects export orders this month either to drop 0.5 percent to US$53.5 billion or grow up to 3.2 percent to US$55.5 billion, Huang said.
The forecast represents an annual growth of between 1.3 percent and 5 percent compared with US$52.8 billion in October last year, she said.
The ministry is cautiously optimistic about this quarter, which should be better than last quarter due to seasonal factors, she said.
If that is the case, export orders this year would return to growth after orders last year contracted 15.9 percent to US$561 billion, as high inflation dampened consumer demand for electronics and the semiconductor industry entered an inventory correction cycle, she said.
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