Although the contraction of Taiwan's machine-tool exports slowed to 5.8% for the month of November 2013, the Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders' Association (TMBA) estimates that the island's overseas shipments of machine tools for the year as a whole would drop 16.5% from 2012, to US$3.5-3.6 billion.
Total machine tool exports for the Jan.-Nov. period totaled US$3.2 billion. The figure for November alone was US$297 million, according to the association.
Some industry insiders, including executives from the Goodway Machine Corp. and Victor Taichung Machinery Works Co., feel that the slump in exports will bottom out in the second quarter of 2014.
TMBA Secretary General J.C. Huang points out that the steep devaluation of the Japanese yen against the US dollar has taken a more serious toll on the island's small and medium-sized machine-tool makers than on their larger counterparts, which have switched production from general-purpose machinery to equipment for making automobiles and aircraft.
The continuing decline in exports of machine tools was in sharp contrast to those of machinery as a whole, which experienced two consecutive months of growth. The machinery industry's exports for the first 11 months of 2013 were down 3.2%, however, from the same period of the previous year.
According to C.C. Wang, president of the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI), Taiwan's overall machinery exports were expected to drop by 2-3% for all of 2013, to US$19,.6 billion—the worst performance since the global economic downturn in 2008. The steepest decline, an estimated 20%, was in the cutting machine tool sector. (KL)
