The central bank said in a report it aims for “relative stability” in prices rather than “absolute stability,” which economists said signaled the nation won’t quicken the pace of -interest-rate increases.
The government “should tackle inflation through the supply side, such as tariff cuts, which can lower the cost of imported products,” the central bank said in a report to be presented to legislators today, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News.
The central bank is due to meet on March 31 to debate whether to join neighbors from China to South Korea in raising borrowing costs this year, after increasing them last year to try to avert a property bubble. Economists from Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) and Capital Securities Corp (群益證券) said the report indicated the central bank won’t accelerate rate rises after consumer inflation climbed.
“This implies the central bank can tolerate the inflation situation currently and that it won’t accelerate its tightening cycle,” said Aidan Wang (王誠宏), an economist at Yuanta -Securities in Taipei.
Policy makers are set to raise borrowing costs 0.125 percentage point to 1.75 percent this month and to 2.125 percent by the end of this year, he said.
The nation’s consumer prices increased 1.33 percent last month from a year earlier, the fastest pace in three months, the statistics bureau said on Monday. The government last month forecast inflation of 2 percent this year compared with 0.96 percent last year.
Bank Governor Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南) and the policy board raised the nation’s benchmark rate in three steps by a combined total of 0.375 percentage point last year from 1.25 percent, as housing prices surged toward a record.
“The central bank knows the market is worried about inflation,” said Nison Chen, an economist at Capital Securities in Taipei. “The comment is trying to tell us that it won’t accelerate its pace of interest-rate increases after oil prices rose to over US$100.”
The central bank report also said tighter lending rules have slowed home-loan growth in certain areas and raised mortgage interest rates.
The monetary authority in December capped second-home mortgages in Taipei City to 60 percent from 70 percent in June and broadened the limit to other areas, while also restricting loans using land as collateral to 65 percent of the real estate’s value.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
RSS