The nation's consumer price index, an inflationary benchmark, rose 4.8 percent year-on-year last month, driven mainly by higher food prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
Growth last month was slower compared with the annual 5.33 percent increase in October, the highest single-month growth in nearly 13 years, DGBAS tallies showed.
But the 4.8 percent increase last month still represented the highest monthly growth since September 1996, the data showed.
The DGBAS attributed the monthly increase last month mainly to a 12.8 percent year-on-year rise in food prices, among the seven sub-indices of CPI measured.
"The increase in food prices is a problem that's happening worldwide," Wu Chao-ming (
"China's food prices increased 11.3 percent from January to October this year, while Hong Kong and the US' both increased 3.8 percent. Taiwan's 2.4 percent increase from January to November is mild in comparison," he said.
Aside from the increase in food prices, rising oil prices were also a major concern. Oil prices last month surged 15.9 percent from the same month last year.
The price of oil per barrel increased 75.2 percent to US$89 last month, Wu said.
Despite the significant increase in international oil prices, domestic prices for 95-octane unleaded gasoline only saw a 17.2 percent rise to NT$30.7 per liter last month, from NT$26.2 in January, he said.
For the whole year, Wu said the DGBAS expects a 1.7 percent increase in the CPI, higher than the 1.39 percent growth forecast by Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (中經院) on Tuesday.
Core CPI, excluding fresh fruit, vegetables, fish and energy, rose 2.36 percent last month, making it the fifth consecutive month it exceeded 1 percent and the highest since March 1999, the DGBAS said.
Meanwhile, the wholesale price index rose 8.23 percent year-on-year last month -- the highest since September last year, the DGBAS said. Last month's WPI was also up 1.3 percent from October.
For the first 11 months of the year, the WPI rose 6.27 percent from a year earlier, the DGBAS said.
"A rising core CPI and soaring WPI suggest that inflationary pressures will remain high in the coming months," Citigroup economists Cheng Cheng-mount (
The latest CPI reading could raise market expectation of a 25 basis points in interest rate raise by the central bank this month, the economists said.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS