The consumer price index (CPI) rose for the second straight month, bringing the yearly inflation rate to 2.35 percent last month, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
While all seven sub-indexes rose across the board, economists and academics attributed the CPI’s growth to the low base effect and increased gasoline prices, saying there was no inflationary pressure.
“The major reason for the increased inflation rate was that fuel prices saw a yearly increase of 25.8 percent, contributing 0.17 percentage points to the growth,” DGBAS section chief Wu Chao-ming (吳昭明) told a media briefing.
The core CPI, which is used to track long-term inflation because it excludes volatile vegetable, fruit, fish and energy prices, grew 1.01 percent last month from a year earlier, snapping an eight-month contraction streak, Wu said.
DGBAS data showed that in the first two months of this year, the CPI rose 1.3 percent compared with the same period last year, with merchandise prices rising 3.28 percent.
“The economy is slowly regaining momentum and international raw material prices are rising, so consumer price hikes are inevitable, indicating growing demand,” Wu said. “But due to still severe labor market conditions, commodity prices will not likely increase greatly.”
The CPI rose 0.53 percent last month from January on increased food prices, babysitting charges, taxi fares and travel expenses because of the Lunar New Year holidays, the data showed.
The wholesale price index increased 5.87 percent year-on-year last month, down from 6.74 recorded in January, because of the increased prices of oil products and chemical materials, it said.
Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂), head economist at Citigroup Taiwan Inc, said by telephone that last month’s CPI growth didn’t indicate inflation because the increase was “reasonable” because the inflation rate contracted last year.
“After allowing for the Lunar New Year factors, the CPI’s growth [of more than 2 percent] is temporary,” Cheng said, adding that in the second half of the year the CPI was expected to rise by about 1 percent.
Yang Chia-yen (楊家彥), a director at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院), said inflationary pressure was not a concern so far, but the government should remain on alert for it over the next few months.
“Compared with last year, gasoline prices increased last month, and the base effect should be taken into account as well,” Yang said by telephone, adding that the inflation rate should remain low in the third and fourth quarters.
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
Chinese entrepreneur Frank Gao used to spend long hours running his social media accounts but now outsources the chore to artificial intelligence (AI) agent tool OpenClaw, which is taking China by storm despite official warnings over cybersecurity. OpenClaw, created in November by an Austrian coder, differs from bots such as ChatGPT because it can execute real-life tasks such as sending e-mails, organizing files or even booking flight tickets. “Since January, I’ve spent hours on the lobster every day,” Gao said in an interview, referring to OpenClaw’s red crustacean mascot. “We’re family.” After downloading OpenClaw, users connect it to artificial intelligence models of their
RSS