TAIPEI, April 22 (Xinhua) -- Companies in Taiwan received worse-than-expected export orders in March, falling for the fifth consecutive month from the same period last year, revealed the latest data on Monday.
Export orders to Taiwan's firms dropped 9 percent from a year earlier to 38.59 billion U.S. dollars in March 2019, while the market widely expected a decline around 5.4 percent.
Among Taiwan's major trade partners, demand from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong slumped 13.7 percent year on year to 9.9 billion U.S. dollars. Orders from the United States weakened 9.7 percent to 10.77 billion U.S. dollars while orders from the ASEAN, Europe and Japan in the month fell 11.2 percent, 2.4 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively.
Month on month, the export orders in March rebounded 2.4 percent from February after seasonal adjustment.
For the first three months, Taiwan's export orders declined 8.4 percent year on year to 107.98 billion U.S. dollars, or diving 22.9 percent from the fourth quarter of last year, according to data from the island's economic affairs authority.
The year-on-year decline in export orders in the first quarter was Taiwan's biggest quarterly slump since 2010.
