Taiwan recovering as well?

The just ended twelfth edition of Taipei Plas (Taipei, March 5-7), the international exhibition for the plastics and rubber industry, recorded a positive outcome. This result is in line with the expectations of the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry for 2010, which should be the year for a recovery, back to 2008 (or pre-crisis) production and export levels. As a matter of fact, in the last quarter of 2009 the logbook of orders has considerably improved, reflecting the Chinese rebound, the good trend of the Indian market, and the best development prospects regard Southeast Asia, India again, the Middle East, Russia and Brasil.
In view of these considerations, however, 2009 was negative also for the Taiwanese plastics and rubber machinery manufacturers: -30% at production, -26% at export and even -40% at import.
As regards purchases from abroad, within a downturn trend the only positive signal was for thermoforming machines, largely provided by Japan: +161%. As for injection moulding machines, there was a considerable shrink for those from Japan and Germany, stability for the Chinese whilst the value from United States almost quintupled, up to 120 million NT$ (7,8% out of the total) or 2,6 million euro. Thanks to this performance, the US replaced Germany at third place among the main providers of Taiwan for plastics and rubber machinery, just after Japan and China.
Looking at the Taiwanese sectoral export, we can see a considerable increase of sales to India, in particular for injection moulding machines, also in light of the customs tariffs imposed by the Indian Government on import from China, that have sustained the Taiwanese manufacturers, at least for standard machines.