The nation’s consumer price index (CPI) rose 2.07 percent last month from the same month a year earlier, the biggest jump in one-and-a-half years, mainly driven by growing food costs, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The 2.07 percent year-on-year increase in the headline inflation reading was up from the level of 1.76 percent recorded a year ago and marked the highest level seen since February last year, the DGBAS said in its monthly report.
The 2.37 percent rise in consumer prices translated into an increase of NT$1,242 in costs per month for a household with outgoings of NT$60,000 per month, the report said.
Households with low incomes saw their CPI surge 2.56 percent last month from the same period in the previous year, higher than the pace of the increase for households with middle or high incomes, as food prices accounted for a greater proportion of the expenditure of low-income families, the report’s data showed.
Food prices jumped 3.78 percent last month year-on-year. Among the seven major food categories monitored by the DGBAS — eggs, meat, vegetables, fruit and seafood products — prices surged, according to the report.
The agency attributed the rise in food prices largely to the disruptive effects on agricultural production of Typhoon Matmo in late July, as well as torrential rainfall in southern Taiwan early last month.
The price of eating out jumped 4.54 percent last month from a year earlier, marking its highest rise for more than five and a half years, while the price of pork leaped by 17.25 percent year-on-year last month, to reach its highest level in six years, the DGBAS report said.
However, DGBAS Deputy Director Tsai Yu-tai (蔡鈺泰) said the upward trend in consumer prices has generally remained stable, with the headline inflation reading rising 1.39 percent in the first eight months from a year earlier, in line with government expectations.
“We forecast the year-on-year increase in CPI to slow to under 2 percent again this month, without the impact of typhoons or other unexpected factors,” Tsai told a press conference.
However, Barclays Capital senior regional economist Leong Wai Ho (梁偉豪) said the acceleration in the annual rise of core inflation suggests that inflationary pressures are building on the demand side, although gradually.
The core CPI, which excludes vegetables, fruit and energy prices, climbed 1.67 percent last month from that seen in the same month last year — its highest rate of growth in 18 months — showing a faster year-on-year expansion for the sixth consecutive month, the data showed.
“We expect core inflation to continue to firm in the months ahead, offsetting any negative drag from lower petrol prices,” Leong said in a statement.
The DGBAS report also showed that the wholesale price index (WPI) increased 0.12 percent last month from the same month a year ago, with the index showing 0.41 percent growth for the first eight months of the year.
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