Taiwan's September export orders miss expectations, China drags

TAIWAN export orders fell short of expectations for September, losing some steam ahead of the year’s end as it remained buoyed by the artificial intelligence wave but ran into faltering demand from top trading partner China.

Export orders last month rose 4.6 per cent to US$53.79 billion from a year earlier, the economics ministry said on Monday (Oct 21). That missed both the 6.8 per cent gain forecast in a Reuters poll and August’s 9.1 per cent expansion, but marked the seventh month in a row of expansion.

Orders for goods from Taiwan, home to tech giants such as chip manufacturer TSMC, are a bellwether of global technology demand.

Businesses continued to expand thanks to AI, high-performance and cloud computing, a ministry statement said.

The ministry expects export orders momentum to be sustained as new applications keep rolling out, boosting demand for semiconductors and servers, the statement said. Consumer electronics products will enter the traditional hot season in the second half of the year, it added.

The ministry said it expects export orders in October will increase between 1.2 per cent and 5.0 per cent year-on-year.

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Taiwan’s orders in September for telecommunications products were up 7.0 per cent from the prior year, while electronic products rose 10.5 per cent from a year earlier.

But overall orders from China fell 3.6 per cent versus a 2.6 per cent expansion the prior month. Orders from the United States climbed 8.3 per cent, versus an 11.2 per cent gain in August.

Orders from Europe shed 4.2 per cent in September after climbing 8.3 per cent in August. From Japan, orders were up 9.8 per cent last month, versus a rise of 2.1 per cent in August. REUTERS