The consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.9 percent last month from a year earlier, its slowest gain in five months, as hikes in fruit prices eased, although they remained the fastest in more than a decade, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The latest CPI data indicated benign inflation as food costs continued to advance more rapidly than other consumer items, suggesting heavier price burdens for low-income earners.
“Overall consumer prices have stabilized as evidenced by the smaller than 1 percent increase in the CPI reading,” DGBAS Deputy Director Tsai Yu-tai (蔡鈺泰) told a news conference in Taipei.
The inflationary gauge has hovered near the 2 percent alarm level since February due to drastic rises in vegetable and fruit prices, as bad weather from the winter and two typhoons last year continued to disrupt supply, Tsai said.
The CPI, after seasonal adjustment, edged down 0.08 percent last month, affirming an almost neutral trend, according to the agency’s monthly report.
For the second quarter, the inflationary index climbed 1.33 percent, down from 1.75 percent in the first quarter, and averaged 1.54 percent in the first half of the year, the report said.
Supply disruptions subsided last month, slowing the rise in food costs to 4.55 percent, even though fruit prices accelerated by 35.81 percent, their quickest pace of increase in 10 years and seven months, Tsai said.
Without the hike in fruit prices, the CPI would have risen only 0.14 percent, Tsai said.
Prices for fishery products, vegetables and meat increased 4.38 percent, 1.83 percent and 1.12 percent respectively from their levels a year earlier, the report said. Processed food and dinning costs gained 1.43 percent, the report said.
The absence of rainstorms or typhoons so far this summer helped stabilize food prices, Tsai said.
Transportation and communications costs declined a 1.46 percent as distortions in crude oil prices tapered off, the report said.
Housing and living prices dropped 0.75 percent last month because the fall in gas and utility prices more than muted the 5.37 percent rise in water charges, the report said.
The core CPI, which is a more reliable indicator of long-term inflation because it excludes volatile items, increased 0.8 percent, smaller than its 0.91 percent rise in May, lending support to price stabilization, the report said.
The wholesale price index (WPI) — a measure of production costs — fell 2.67 percent last month from a year earlier, stable from a 2.72 percent decline in May, the report said.
Stripping foreign exchange volatility, export prices averaged 6.2 percent lower last month from a year earlier, posing continued challenge for export data to return to positive territory in June.
The WPI dropped 3.19 percent last quarter, easing from 4.99 percent decline in the first quarter, and shrank 4.1 percent for the first six months, the report said.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure