TAIPEI: Exports were likely to have fallen last month for the 11th consecutive month and could post a 10 percent decline for last year as a whole, dragged by the global slowdown, Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford said yesterday.
Exports for last month could register another double-digit fall, Chang said when asked to give a preview of export data for last month and last year as a whole ahead of the ministry’s release of the numbers on Friday.
If Chang’s remarks prove to be true, exports will have slid by double-digits for the seventh month in a row, the worst performance since 2009, when the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 battered the world economy.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics estimated in late November that exports could drop 10.2 percent for the year, and Chang said the actual figures “should not be far from projection.”
Chang attributed the disappointing exports to weak demand from the European and US markets, the soft growth in sales of consumer electronic devices such as the iPhone 6S, and a persistant decline in crude oil prices.
Cheap oil prices have hurt exports of mineral, chemical and plastic products, which account for 20 percent of the nation’s total exports, the ministry has said.
As exports equal to 70 percent of GDP, poor data bode ill for the economic showing in the fourth quarter of last year, after a mild downturn in the third quarter.
The government has introduced stimulus measures to boost private consumption and the Central Bank cut interest rates by 12.5 basis points in September and last month to prop up economic activity.
