COMPARISON BASE:ICT orders improved slightly on a monthly basis, but were down 3.2% annually, as growing trade tensions last year drove overseas clients to rush orders

Taipei Times
Date:  Aug 21, 2019
By: Natasha Li  /  Staff reporter

Export orders last month declined 3 percent year-on-year to US$40.53 billion, falling for the ninth consecutive month, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday.

While orders of information and communications technology (ICT) products, the nation’s most lucrative category, slightly improved by 0.1 percent on a monthly basis, it declined by 3.2 percent on an annual basis to US$11.11 billion, the ministry said, blaming the annual decline on a relatively high comparison base last year.

“A lot of overseas clients rushed orders from July to September last year, when trade tensions between the US and China started to rise,” Statistics Department Director Huang Yu-ling (黃于玲) told a news conference.

However, Huang said that she expects positive year-on-year order growth for ICT products in the coming months.    [FULL  STORY]