Despite an escalating US-China trade dispute, Taiwan’s international seaports did not see a large rise in transshipment cargo containers in the first quarter this year, Taiwan International Port Corp (TIPC) statistics showed.
The trade issue has motivated Taiwanese companies to move production capacity from China back to Taiwan, with the Ministry of Economic Affairs last week estimating returning investment would reach NT$600 billion (US$19.08 billion), mostly in the electronics and information technology industries.
However, TIPC data showed that the nation’s seaports handled a combined 5,000,966 twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEU) from January to last month, a 0.55 percent increase from the same period last year.
The Port of Kaohsiung saw a rise of 0.88 percent to 3.4 million TEU, while the Port of Taichung and Port of Taipei increased 2.29 percent and 0.62 percent to 558,939 TEU and 552,950 TEU respectively compared with the same period last year, TIPC said.
