Domestic households paid an additional NT$2,610 to eat out last year, reflecting higher consumer prices while wages continue to stagnate, government statistics released on Saturday showed.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said that dining-out costs rose 3.61 percent year-on-year last year largely because of rising food prices, which grew 3.74 percent from the previous year.
Higher food and dining-out costs made the relatively lower consumer price index (CPI) growth seem insignificant to some consumers.
Last year, CPI rose by just 1.2 percent — the sixth consecutive year it has risen by less than 2 percent — while fuel costs and prices of non-food items, such as communications services and information technology devices, went down.
The DGBAS said that a household that spends NT$60,000 a month paid NT$2,610 more to eat out last year than in 2013.
Among the most popular restaurants in Taiwan, Formosa Chang (鬍鬚張), a traditional Taiwanese cuisine chain, raised the price of its braised pork rice to NT$35 from NT$33 in July.
It was the third price increase for Formosa Chang last year.
PORK HIKES
Many other braised pork rice suppliers also raised their prices to between NT$30 and NT$45 from about NT$25.
According to a recent news report, about 85 percent of people in Taiwan aged from 20 to 65 dined out at least once a day.
The DGBAS said that based on the rigid pricing characteristics of restaurants and eateries, once dining-out costs go up, it is unlikely that consumers would see the prices come down, even when fuel prices fall.
FUEL PRICES
Due to a steep decline in international crude oil prices, household fuel spending fell by about NT$856 last year, the DGBAS said.
The price of a basket of 17 household necessities — including rice, pork, bread, eggs, sugar, cooking oil, shampoo and toilet paper — monitored by the Cabinet rose 5.35 percent last year, its highest rise since 2008, when the price of the items rose 13.65 percent.
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
RSS