Japanese consumer prices picked up in January for the first time in almost a year, government data showed yesterday, halting a long string of declines as Tokyo struggles to put deflation in the rear view mirror.
A key inflation index, which excludes the volatile cost of fresh food, rose 0.1 percent from a year earlier, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said.
The increase, largely due to rebound in oil and energy prices, marked the first uptick in 11 months and ended the longest string of price declines in more than five years.
Photo: AFP
It was also the first positive monthly inflation figure since December 2015.
Spending by Japan’s households remains weak, separate data showed yesterday, with a 1.2 percent on-year fall in January. That was the 11th consecutive month of decline.
Slow wage growth is weighing on consumer spending — which accounts for more than a half of Japan’s GDP — despite a tight jobs market.
Unemployment has been at its lowest level in around 20 years. Fresh data released yesterday showed the jobless rate edged down from 3.1 percent in December last year to 3 percent in January.
This week, Japan posted an unexpected drop in factory output for January, the first fall in six months and the latest red flag for the world’s No. 3 economy.
Japan has been struggling to reverse a years-long deflationary spiral of falling prices and lackluster growth.
“The government is teaming up with the Bank of Japan to keep working toward getting out of deflation,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters yesterday.
Tokyo’s years-long effort to kickstart growth — a blend of massive monetary easing, government spending and red-tape slashing — stoked a stock market rally, weakened the yen and fattened corporate profits, but growth in the wider economy remains fragile.
The Bank of Japan, which holds a policy meeting this month, now expects to hit its 2 percent inflation target by March 2019 — four years later than planned.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six