The annual growth in the consumer price index (CPI) last month hit its highest level since February 2010 because of rising vegetable prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
Headline inflation rose 2.03 percent last month from a year earlier, from November’s annual growth of 1.01 percent, with food costs increasing 5.41 percent — the most among the seven main sectors surveyed by the DGBAS.
Vegetable prices increased 48.05 percent last month from a year ago, marking their highest growth since November 2007, as heavy rains cut supplies and drove up costs, DGBAS section chief Wang Shu-chuan (王淑娟) told a press conference.
“Rising vegetable prices drove up headline inflation by 1.01 percentage points last month, almost half of its growth level,” Wang said.
Excluding vegetable prices, CPI growth was a moderate 1.02 percent last month, she said.
Egg prices rose 29.57 percent from a year ago, given a low comparison base last year, while fruit prices dropped 9.68 percent year-on-year, offsetting part of the increase in food prices, the DGBAS said in a report.
Wang said it was hard to tell, based on last month’s data alone, if overall inflationary pressure had expanded. The latest data from the Council of Agriculture showed vegetable prices had gradually stabilized over the past few days, she said.
However, inflation could trend higher this month because of the Lunar New Year holiday, Wang said. A short-term spike in prices usually occurs in the run-up to the holiday, which starts on Jan. 23 this year.
Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂), chief economist at Citigroup in Taipei, shared Wang’s view that higher vegetable prices could be a short-term phenomenon, but that prices would remain high this month because of the Lunar New Year holiday.
Cheng expected the CPI to rise 2.8 percent this month because of the buying spree.
Since this could lift headline inflation in the first quarter, the central bank is unlikely to cut its policy rates when it meets in March, Cheng said.
The 2.03 percent increase in consumer prices translated into increased costs of NT$1,218 a month for a household with a monthly income of NT$60,000, compared with a year earlier, with food costs rising NT$899, the DGBAS report said.
Growth in core CPI — which excludes vegetable, fruit and energy prices — stood at 1.18 percent last month, compared with 1.24 percent in October, DGBAS data showed.
On a monthly basis, prices were up 0.25 percent last month, but down 0.07 percent after being seasonally adjusted, data showed.
For the full year, inflation rose to 1.42 percent, within the target set by the Council for Economic Planning and Development of growth of less than 2 percent.
The wholesale price index rose 4.32 percent year-on-year last month — the same as its full-year growth last year, the DGBAS said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”