(Bloomberg) -- Taiwan’s export orders fell in April for the first time since 2020 as Covid lockdowns in China weighed on production capacity for major Taiwanese companies. 

Orders dropped 5.5% from a year earlier, a far worse outcome than the 11% gain expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. It was the first drop in orders since February 2020, when the pandemic began, and the worst drop since January 2020, when orders fell 12.8% on year. 

The Taiwanese government warned a few weeks ago that export order growth would likely slow to between 1% and 3.8% in April, but Friday’s figures are even worse than that expectation. 

“Although the demand for emerging technology applications and digital transformation continues to grow, the lockdown in mainland China has resulted in reduced production capacity,” the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement Friday, citing problems such as logistics disruptions and shortages of raw materials. 

The lockdowns in China have posed challenges to Taiwan’s growth, given the extent to which Taiwanese firms operate there. Big names -- including Foxconn Technology Group and Pegatron Corp -- have plants in parts of China that were impacted by lockdowns, though they said they were able to keep operating by using so-called closed loop systems. That strategy allows firms to operate by allowing workers to live on site and testing them regularly.

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