Export orders last year increased 5.1 percent year-on-year to US$589.54 billion, ending two consecutive years of decline, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a report yesterday.
The growth in export orders beat the ministry’s forecast last month of an annual increase of 4.5 to 4.8 percent, with the size of orders hitting the third-highest level on record after US$674.13 billion in 2021 and US$666.79 billion in 2022, ministry data showed.
The increase came from strong demand for emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, as well as rising orders for goods related to semiconductor equipment and some non-technology inventory restocking demand, the ministry said.
Photo: CNA
A low comparison base a year earlier also helped, it added.
The better-than-expected showing came as export orders — an indicator of product and component shipments to overseas markets for the following one to three months — last month increased 20.8 percent year-on-year to US$52.92 billion, rising for the 10th straight month and exceeding the ministry’s forecast of an increase of 13 to 17.5 percent.
In a poll of domestic manufacturers by the ministry, only 11.4 percent of respondents were optimistic that export orders would increase this month from last month, while 48.8 percent said that orders would be flat and 39.8 percent expected them to decline, the report said.
In addition, the diffusion index of export orders — a gauge of manufacturers’ expectations on export orders for the following month — fell to 42.4 last month from 48.8 in November and was below the threshold of 50, which suggests manufacturers are remaining cautious, it said.
As a result, export orders this month are forecast to decrease 4 to 8.1 percent year-on-year to between US$44.5 billion and US$46.5 billion, the ministry said.
The latest data showed that export orders last month for electronic components increased 33.5 percent year-on-year to US$19.92 billion, and those for information and communications technology (ICT) products grew 24.3 percent to US$15.25 billion.
Last year as a whole, orders for electronic components grew 11.5 percent year-on-year to US$211.55 billion, while ICT orders increased 3.6 percent to US$172.02 billion, the report said.
Orders for optoelectronic products increased 17.7 percent to US$1.89 billion last month and rose 8.7 percent to US$20.8 billion last year.
However, companies in non-technology sectors had a mixed showing last month, with export orders for machinery goods rising 6 percent, and those for plastic and rubber products increasing 5.5 percent year-on-year, while base metal and chemical products shrank 4.5 percent and 0.6 percent respectively, as firms lost orders amid price competition from foreign peers, the report said.
For the whole of last year, orders for machinery products increased 1.1 percent to US$19.43 billion; orders for base metal products edged up 0.3 percent to US$25.17 billion; orders for plastic and rubber products rose 1.7 percent to US$19.07 billion; and those for chemical goods were up 2.8 percent to US$17.91 billion, it said.
Throughout the year, the US, China and ASEAN were the three major export destinations, with orders from these markets rising 8.6 percent, 5.3 percent and 15.9 percent from the previous year to US$193.64 billion, US$126.68 billion and US$98.27 billion respectively, while orders from Europe declined 9.9 percent to US$84.62 billion and those from Japan fell 4.2 percent to US$29.22 billion, the report 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.