Taiwan export orders rise for third straight month, up 7% in May

Taipei, June 20 (CNA) Taiwan's export orders rose by 7 percent from a year earlier in May, marking the third consecutive monthly year-on-year growth, due mainly to solid demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications and emerging technologies, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said Thursday.

Data compiled by the MOEA showed the country's export orders stood at US$48.89 billion in May, up 7 percent from a year earlier, beating an earlier MOEA estimate, ranging from US$46.5 billion to US$48.5 billion, up 1.8-6.2 percent from a year earlier.

Speaking with reporters, MOEA Department of Statistics Director Huang Yu-ling (黃于玲) attributed the better-than-expected performance in May largely to moves by clients to rebuild their inventories and growing demand for high-performance computing (HPC) devices, AI applications and cloud-based gadgets.

Export orders for information communication technology products rose 11.4 percent from a year earlier to a record high of US$14.06 billion, while those received by the electronics industry increased 9.2 percent to US$16.89 billion, as the boom in emerging technologies pushed up demand for related products and electronic components, the MOEA said.

In May, the optoelectronics equipment industry received US$1.77 billion in export orders, up 7.0 percent from a year earlier, according to the data.

In the first five months of the year, Taiwan's export orders rose 2.2 percent from a year earlier to US$229.3 billion, the MOEA data indicated.

Looking ahead, Huang said that whether export orders increase in the second half of this year will depend on end-user demand and geopolitical risks.

The performance of export orders bottomed out in the first quarter of this year and is expected to bounce back in the second quarter, Huang added.

The country's export orders are expected to range from US$49.0 billion to US$51.0 billion in June, up 10.9-15.4 percent from a year earlier, Huang said.

Taiwan's export orders reached US$133.32 billion in the first quarter and are expected to range between US$145.0 billion and US$147.0 billion in the second quarter, the ministry said.