November Machinery Exports See Third Consecutive Uptick: TAMI

The Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI) announced November machinery export figures on Tuesday, signaling a lessening YoY contraction.

For the past eleven months, Taiwan's machinery equipment total export value reached USD$23.485 billion, while a 5.2% YoY contraction, the figures represented the demand was resuming overseas. November exports saw USD$2.416 billion, a 10.8% increase compared to last year, and represented a three-month consecutive positive growth.

TAMI Chairman Alex Ko said with the U.S.-China trade tensions and COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan's machinery exports struggled since March for six consecutive months of negative growth. Ko said September finally brought reprieve for the industry with a 0.8%-positive uptick, expanding to 5.3% in October, and now 10.8% lat month.

Observing the long-term trend throughout 2020, Ko was optimistic about lessening the YoY contraction within 4% by the year-end. The industry benefits from Taiwanese businesses relocating back to the island, increasing investments, and government policy bolstering the domestic market; for example, replacement subsidies for old machine tool equipment. Ko expects 2020 total machinery industry value to remain steady as last year, around $1.1 trillion.

The top three machinery exports in the past eleven months are inspection equipment (14.4%), seeing a YoY growth of 12.3%; electronics equipment (13.4%), a YoY growth of 7.1% and machine tools (8.3%), a YoY decline of 30.8%.

In the same period, the top three outbound destinations are China (29.8%), the U.S. (22.4%), and Japan (6.8%).

Ko highlighted struggles in the machine tool industry, citing diminishing demand in main export regions such as Europe and the U.S. due to the pandemic and a strong Taiwan Dollar.