First quarter up for Taiwan

According to the data released in these days by the local statistics office, in January-March of the current year Taiwan's trade of plastics and rubber machinery recorded a growth for both flows, with respect to the same period of 2009: +9% at import and a remarkable +33% at export.
Purchases from abroad of injection moulding machines (512 million Taiwan dollars, corresponding to some 11.7 million euro, 22% out of the total) showed a 121% jump. The vast majority (72%) was provided by Japan: as a matter of fact, the Japanese manufacturers almost returned to 2008 levels, with a value of 367 million Taiwanese dollars, versus 60 in January-March 2009. Then we find China that not only recovered but even more than doubled the amount reached in 2008, with more than 87 million NT$.
Still decreasing the import of extrusion lines - that dropped to just below 300 million dollars, from the 440 in the first quarter of 2009 - and in this case the German manufacturers faced a 29% reduction of their sales to the Taiwanese processors.
Strong uptrend for plants for mono and multifilaments, up to some 200 million, i.e. almost the same amount recorded all along the whole 2009; Japan and South Korea provided 1/3 each and then followed Switzerland (25% out of the total) and China (9%).
As regards export, the increase of injection moulding machines - that represent more than 30% out of the total, up to 2.88 billion Taiwanese dollars, i.e. 65.6 million euro - was considerable: the top 5 destination markets of this type of machines, that absorbed 64% of the total, recorded exponential trend such as +285% of sales to China (987 million Taiwanese dollars), +363% to India (300 million), +219% to Thailand (166 million) whilst Vietnam "just" filed +27%, exceeding 190 million. Negligible the amount of sales to Italy.