The annual growth in the consumer price index (CPI) surged to a 16-month high last month, an indication that the recent slowing of prices of crude oil, and agricultural and industrial raw materials have not yet factored into consumer prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The inflation indicator increased 1.93 percent from a year earlier last month, the highest level since a 2.34 percent increase in February last year, DGBAS section chief Wang Shu-chuan (王淑娟) told a press conference.
“Although the prices of raw materials and oils showed a decrease last month, it did not transfer to a change in consumer prices immediately amid a deferral effect,” she said.
Growth in core inflation — which excludes vegetable, fruit and energy prices — increased to 1.23 percent last month from a year ago, the highest level since January 2009, which also proved this point, DGBAS said.
The 1.93 percent increase in inflation last month translated into increased costs of NT$1,158 a month for households with a monthly income of NT$60,000, compared with a year earlier, with food rising NT$548 and gasoline NT$220, Wang said.
Food prices topped the list of increases, rising 3.34 percent from a year earlier, with the price of fruit surging 21.3 percent year-on-year, the most among the sector, on the stronger demand caused by public worries over the chemical di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), the report said.
The jump in the price of fruit marked a new high since it surged 25.52 percent in July 2008, Wang said, adding that it contributed 0.51 percentage points to last month’s overall CPI growth.
In addition, airfare hikes and the start of the summer vacation also boosted last month’s travel prices, Wang said.
For the first half of the year, overall inflation was 1.45 percent while core inflation was 0.99 percent, DGBAS data showed.
The wholesale price index (WPI) rose 3.94 percent year-on-year, up from 3.38 percent the previous month, with prices for chemical materials, oil-related products and the base metals remaining at high levels, DGBAS said.
Donna Kwok (郭浩庄), economist for Greater China at HSBC Asia, said in a note yesterday that inflationary pressures were still running low relative to other countries in Asia, giving the central bank ample room to stick to its conservative pace of monetary normalization.
Kwok expects the bank to retain its policy of raising interest rates in bite-sized hikes — with a 0.125 percent increase— at its board meeting in September, amid continuing worries about the potential for second-round effects from global inflation.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts