The nation's consumer price index rose 0.95 percent year-on-year in October as a result of higher vegetable prices triggered by two consecutive typhoons in September, the government said yesterday.
The October CPI was also 1.5 percent higher from the previous month due to the launch of autumn and winter garments and higher vegetable prices in the aftermath of Typhoons Nari and Lekima, said the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) in a statement.
Nari, the most devastating of the two typhoons, destroyed parts of northern Taiwan in the worst floods in a century, leaving at least 84 people dead and billions of US dollars in damage.
Meanwhile, the October wholesale price index (WPI) fell 2.74 percent from a year earlier and was down 0.94 percent month-on-month largely due to slower domestic and global demand, the directorate said. During the first 10 months of the year, the CPI was up 0.28 percent year-on-year and the WPI was down 0.54 percent, it said.
A directorate official said that increased tobacco and liquor tariffs after Taiwan joins the WTO will cause the CPI to rise by 0.64 percentage points to 0.74 percentage points, but prices will drop for other import commodities.
Nine straight months of record unemployment and a shrinking economy are sapping consumer demand. Tame inflation has allowed the central bank to trim interest rates 10 times since December to a record-low 2.5 percent, and it may cut them further after an expected US rate reduction tomorrow, analysts said.
"Taiwan will definitely follow the Fed cut as it tries to revive Taiwan's slumping economy," said Vickie Hsieh, chief economist at President Securities Corp (統一證券). "The cut may give the stock market a short-lived boost, but the effect [of rate cuts] on the economy is diminishing."
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last