Taiwan's January export orders dropped 10.1%

US orders fell sharply.

According to DBS, Taiwan's export orders for January came in weaker than expected at -2.8% YoY (consensus: 1.3%) . On the MoM (sa) basis, export orders fell -10.1% in Jan14, reversing the earlier gains accumulated in Sep-Dec13 (+12.5%).

Here's more:

A closer look shows that the drop in orders was across all the product categories and across all the markets, suggesting that some specific factors should have been at play.

The recent cold weather in the US may have played a role in exaggerating the data weakness. Amongst the major export markets, orders from the US fell especially sharply in January, by -10.5% MoM sa. Meanwhile, orders from China and Hong Kong also decreased notably by -5.1% MoM sa.

The temporary factory closures in China during the Lunar New Year period should have caused distortion. Note that the LNY holiday began in end-January this year and covered early-February. This increases the complication of stripping out seasonal factors.

To tell the true picture of export performance, it is better to wait for data in the full month of February and make comparisons based on the combination of Jan-Feb data.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia