* February orders fall for fifth month in February
* February output decline narrows from January's record
* Rush orders offer respite, but demand still weak (Adds quotes from analysts, officials)
By Jeanny Kao and Lee Chyen Yee
TAIPEI, March 24 (Reuters) - Taiwan's orders logged a fifth straight month of decline in February, with analysts saying that rush orders from China after the Lunar New Year offered temporary relief but did not point to a clear recovery in global demand.
Taiwan's export orders in February fell 22.3 percent from a year earlier, faring better than market forecasts for a 28.0 percent drop and easing from a record 41.7 percent decline in January thanks to an pickup in Chinese demand.
In the first two months of the year, orders fell by a third, steeper than the falls in the final few months of 2008, signalling that floundering global demand could still weigh on Asia's exports in the near term.
Analysts said orders were likely to continue falling on weakening global demand although some think the pace of the expected decline will ease.
"We see some improvement in the credit situation worldwide. The bottom may be nearer than expected, but it will still take a while to stabilise," said Daniel Soh, economist at Forecast Ltd.
Huang Ji-shih, the economics ministry's chief statistician, said the drop in Taiwan's orders in March could ease to around 20 percent as some Chinese companies restock their inventories after over-cutting output previously.
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 Korea have also seen a similar trend after they began posting declines since November as the global downturn hammered Asia's trade-reliant economies.
In further evidence suggesting more global weakness, the World Bank said the world's economy will likely contract by one to two percent this year, with the degree of the slowdown seen unprecedented since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Analysts said any improvement in Asia's export numbers would hinge on the outlook of developed markets.
"The external environment is pretty shaky. It depends on major economies in the West, how effective are they to support their domestic consumption," said Daniel Soh, an economist at Forecast in Singapore.
Separately, the economics ministry data showed Taiwan's industrial output in February fell 27.1 percent from a year earlier, 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.
Like export orders, most analysts expect output to slide further but some predict the pace to ease.
"The bottom in industrial production may have been reached," said Sean Yokota, an economist at UBS. (Additional reporting by Ralph Jennings in Taipei and Kevin Yao in Singapore) (Editing by Kazunori Takada)