* February orders fall for fifth month in February
* February output decline narrows from January's record
* Rush orders offer respite, but demand still weak
TAIPEI, March 24 (Reuters) - Taiwan's February export orders in February fell 22.3 percent from a year earlier, falling for a fifth straight month, but easing from a record fall in January as rush orders from China helped offset the decline.
A Reuters poll of economists had expected February's orders to fall by a steeper 28.0 percent.
Taiwan's orders, which usually offer some hints to where Asia's exports are headed in coming weeks and seen as a bellwether of global technology demand, have been logging annual falls since October.
Exports from China and Korea have also seen a similar trend after they began posting declines since November as the global downturn hammered Asia's trade-reliant economies.
However, the timing of the Lunar New Year, which was in February last year and January this year, could have distorted the overall trend in China, Korea and Taiwan.
January and February combined, Taiwan's orders fell by a third, signalling that the global economy was worsening and that rush orders were just a temporary relief that did not suggest a clear improvement in demand.
The global economy is set to contract by one to two percent this year, with the degree of the slowdown seen unprecedented since the Great Depression in the 1930s, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said.
Taiwan's industrial output in February fell 27.14 percent from a year earlier, economics ministry's data showed, smaller than the Reuters poll's 29.4 percent fall and narrower than January's record decline of 43.1 percent.
In the first two months of the year, output fell by 36 percent, economics ministry data showed. (Reporting by Jeanny Kao, Lee Chyen Yee and Hong Kong bureau; Editing by Kazunori Takada)