The consumer price index (CPI) last month rose 2.25 percent year-on-year, its fastest rise in 11 months, as service providers raised charges over the Lunar New Year holiday and fuel cost hikes neared 30 percent, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The inflationary gauge might stabilize slightly this month as holiday disruptions decrease, while an increase in energy costs is expected to linger due to a low base of comparison for the whole of last year, the statistics agency said.
“Babysitters, hairdressers, taxi drivers and retail service providers raised charges steeply over the Lunar New Year holiday in keeping with tradition,” DGBAS Deputy Director Tsai Yu-tai (蔡鈺泰) said at a news conference.
Together, miscellaneous expenses lifted CPI by 0.44 percentage points, while entertainment and educational costs contributed 0.3 percentage points, Tsai said.
The six-day holiday also spurred banquet and travel demands, driving food and transportation costs up 2.98 percent and 4.66 percent respectively, Tsai said.
Hotels, theme parks, restaurants and travel agencies raised rates to take advantage of spiking demand over the holiday.
Removing the holiday effect, CPI rose 1.61 percent, but declined 0.2 percent after seasonal adjustments, Tsai said.
Food costs remained the main driver, boosting the inflationary reading by 0.84 percentage points, followed by transportation and communication costs, which contributed 0.63 percentage points, Tsai said.
Fuel costs gained 27.13 percent as crude prices have climbed from US$26.5 per barrel last year to US$52.5 per barrel, Tsai said, adding that the base effect would remain in the absence of surprises.
Core CPI, a more reliable gauge of long-term inflation movements because it excludes volatile items, stood at 1.65 percent, more than double December last year’s level of 0.81 percent, Tsai said.
The central bank might step in and raise interest rates to ease inflationary pressures if core CPI readings rise higher than 2 percent, Tsai said.
The wholesale price index, a measure of commercial production costs, rose 2.72 percent year-on-year last month, its fastest pace of increase in five years, due to higher mineral, basic metal and chemical prices, Tsai said.
Import prices advanced 10.67 percent in US dollar terms, while export prices gained 4.67 percent, Tsai 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],”