The central bank’s next quarterly policymaking meeting is to be held on Thursday next week, the first to be presided over by new bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍), who took office last month.
In a written report to the Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee ahead of a hearing scheduled for today, Yang said the nation’s interest rates are still higher than many other economies, but its real interest rates are “appropriate.”
That comment led analysts and investors to conclude the bank would leave key interest rates next week, despite a rate hike cycle in the US.
Consumer price growth in Taiwan has remained stable, with the consumer price index (CPI) standing at 1.54 percent for the first two months of the year, within the government’s 2 percent target, Yang said in the report.
Although last month’s CPI rose 2.19 percent from a year earlier, the highest since January last year, the spike was caused by seasonal factors, such as the Lunar New Year holiday occuring last month, boosting expenses such as travel costs, he said.
Last year’s hike in tobacco and alcohol prices would continue to affect consumer prices, while the 3 percent wage increase for civil servants, teachers and military personnel that took effect on Jan. 1 is expected to boost prices, on the whole consumer price growth is expected to stay stable, Yang said.
The CPI is expected to increase by 1.21 percent this year, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said earlier this month.
The release of Yang’s report has raised hopes that no changes will be made to the bank’s monetary policy next week, analysts said.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained