The consumer price index (CPI) climbed 0.29 percent to 104.73 last month from a year ago, snapping an 11-month contraction streak, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The DGBAS said the growth was largely caused by surging crude oil prices, which rose 83 percent year-on-year last month to an average of US$76.01 per barrel, the DGBAS report showed.
“Despite the high comparison base in January last year due to the Lunar New Year, last month’s CPI still saw yearly growth, indicating that consumer prices did go up,” DGBAS section chief Wu Chao-ming (吳昭明) told a media briefing.
The CPI rose last month because global raw materials prices have been rising for a while, Wu said, adding that prices would continue to rise in the future.
The wholesale price index increased 6.68 percent to 105.83 last month, posting the highest level since September 2008, he said. The transportation and communication sub-index rose 6.69 percent, led by the 36.67 percent jump in oil prices because of a low comparison base last year, the report showed.
Clothing prices rose 4.12 percent mainly because of large discounts for the Lunar New Year holiday in the same period last year, while education and entertainment declined 3.55 percent because of the high comparison base, the data showed.
However, the core CPI, used to track long-term inflation because it excludes volatile vegetable, fruit, fish and energy prices, contracted 1.11 percent last month from a year earlier, Wu said
“The contraction was the result of a high comparison base last year and a decrease of 1.86 percent in the services sub-index,” he said.
The CPI increased 0.12 percent from December with transportation and communications costs climbing 1.28 percent because tax breaks for automobiles and scooters ended. The CPI was expected to see an year-on-year increase this month as well, Wu said, adding that the figure would continue to rise at a moderate pace.
Cheng Cheng-mount (鄭貞茂), head economist at Citigroup Taiwan Inc, told the Taipei Times by telephone that last month’s CPI growth was similar to what the market had expected.
“Our forecast was 0.3 percent,” he said, adding that this month’s CPI was likely to see an yearly increase of more than 2 percent due to the base effect.
“However, this doesn’t mean that inflation is not likely to occur,” he said.
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