Taiwan's Export Orders Hit Monthly Record High of US$42.31B. in December 2013

Thanks to robust sales of smart phones and tablet PCs, export orders received in December 2013  by Taiwan's manufacturers and traders surged 7.4% year on year (YoY) to US$42.31 billion for the sixth consecutive monthly rise and the highest-ever monthly record, according to the statistics released by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

The obvious rise in export order value in December helped reverse the downtrend of such value for the full year to a positive 0.4% growth to hit annual record high of US$442.93 billion.

L. C. Lin, director of the Statistics Department of MOEA, indicates that orders for ICT and electronic products in December showed a sizable YoY rise of 13.5% and 14.7%, respectively, due mainly to the strong market demand for hand-held devices including smart phones and tablet PCs that spurred need for IC design, wafer, chip, and DRAM.

The growing orders from Europe signals economic recovery in the area. In December the orders from Europe jumped by 11% YoY and those for ICT items experienced the highest growth of 24.6%.

In the same month Taiwan's directional movement index of order value dropped below the median to 45.1 as the index ranges from 0 to 100. Nevertheless, Lin believes that the export order value in January of this year will also be over US$40 billion since the economic climate for 2014 is forecast to be better than 2013's.

In 2013, Taiwan witnessed positive growth in orders from almost all of the export markets including the U.S., Europe, mainland China & Hong Kong, and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), yet the orders from Japan declined  8.3% to US$37.04 billion. In December of the year, the proportion of the island's export orders filled abroad hit a record high of 54.1%, with such figure for the full year reaching 51.49%, with ICT products seeing the highest percentage of 87.3% among the export items, up by 2.7 percentage points from the corresponding percentage of 2012. (JL)