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  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Taiwan’s tech production went boom! in March

(2020/04/24)


Taiwan’s posted its monthly Industrial Production Indexes for March 2020 and they contain some nice-looking numbers.

The indexes measure the weight of activity compared to past performance, rather than value of activity.

Overall industrial production was up 10.41 percent across all sectors, with manufacturing up 11.09 percent. And in the sectors most likely to impact supply of the things Reg readers care about the most, performance was strong as shown in the table below.

Sector/Comparison

Integrated circuits

Liquid crystal panel and components

Computers, Electronic and optical products

Compared with Last Month (%)

13.26

38.83

28.33

Compared with the same Month of last year (%)

40.26

-1.1

22.16

Jan.-Current Month Compared with the Same Period of Last Year (%)

38.77

-6.58

13.93

The [1]data dump is offered without explanation, but The Register can hazard a guess at what’s going on here: when China locked down and its industries stopped producing, buyers turned to Taiwan for their supplies and did so because the nation had capacity to help.

That Taiwan did very well in its effort to contain the novel coronavirus can’t have hurt. The country started to look for possible carriers in early January and has recorded just 427 COVID-19 cases at the time of writing. The country even seems set to [2]allow travel over the May Day long weekend.

If the production spike is also a sign of a general economic bounce-back as the world gets a handle on the pandemic, all the better! ®

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[1] https://www.moea.gov.tw/MNS/english/news/News.aspx?kind=6&menu_id=176&news_id=89445

[2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/13/taiwan_may_track_traffic_to_offer_social_distancing_advice_to_travellers/

[3] https://go.theregister.co.uk/tl/1936/-8553/legacy-modernization-finding-your-way-with-low-code?td=wptl1936

Anonymous Coward

No surprise there, Everyone was wearing masks and using sanitiser, since January. There was NO lockdown and NO social-distancing.

Their economy was running in overtime, to try and supply the rest of the world who were locking their economies down, because they had no masks or sanitisers, and those they did have were reserved for politicians and medical staff.

I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.