The consumer price index (CPI) last month edged up 0.09 percent year-on-year, ending nine months of decline, as prices for food, healthcare and miscellaneous items picked up amid improving demand, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
A slump in crude oil prices, previously the main drag on the index, tapered off, but prices are unlikely to return to positive territory in the short term, the statistics agency said.
Cheaper crude oil prices have meant there has been no need to worry about deflation — a decrease in the prices of goods and services that sees the public postponing purchases, leading to a recession — an agency official said.
Photo: CNA
Lower energy prices are favorable for consumers, giving them more leeway to spend on other items, the official said.
“Cheaper fuel prices, practically or theoretically, is not a cause of deflation... It is even less of a concern now that price declines have narrowed,” the official added.
Prices of miscellaneous items reported the biggest advance of 1.05 percent, lifted by strong demand for gold jewelry and personal accessories, the DGBAS report said.
Imports of gold jewelry surged almost twofold from the previous year, Ministry of Finance trade data showed.
Medicine and healthcare costs rose 0.49 percent as clinics and hospitals raised registration and copayment fees, the report said.
Garment prices gained 0.4 percent, while food costs advanced 0.4 percent after a bad harvest last year lowered the comparison bar, the agency said.
Transportation and communications costs fell 1.48 percent year-on-year, even though airline tickets prices soared 21.71 percent to a 20-year high on the back of low supply and capacity, it said.
Education and entertainment costs fell 0.66 percent from a year earlier as local hotels cut prices to attract customers, it added.
Seasonally adjusted CPI increased 0.35 percent, while core CPI — a more reliable long-term price tracker, as it excludes volatile items — rose 0.78 percent, lending support to stable consumer prices, the agency said.
The wholesale price index (WPI), a measure of production costs, fell 6.22 percent year-on-year, up from a revised 7.41 percent decline a month earlier, the DGBAS said.
Export and import prices of petrochemical and mineral products continued to fall, but base metal prices picked up, it said.
In the first 11 months of the year, the CPI fell 0.26 percent, while the WPI fell 8.07 percent, it added.
NEW IDENTITY: Known for its software, India has expanded into hardware, with its semiconductor industry growing from US$38bn in 2023 to US$45bn to US$50bn India on Saturday inaugurated its first semiconductor assembly and test facility, a milestone in the government’s push to reduce dependence on foreign chipmakers and stake a claim in a sector dominated by China. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened US firm Micron Technology Inc’s semiconductor assembly, test and packaging unit in his home state of Gujarat, hailing the “dawn of a new era” for India’s technology ambitions. “When young Indians look back in the future, they will see this decade as the turning point in our tech future,” Modi told the event, which was broadcast on his YouTube channel. The plant would convert
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
New vehicle sales in Taiwan plunged about 37 percent sequentially last month as the long Lunar New Year holiday and 228 Peace Memorial Day holiday cut short the number of working days, along with the lingering uncertainty over import tax cuts on US vehicles, market researcher U-Car said in a report yesterday. New car sales last month totaled 22,043, slumping from 35,073 units in January and down 19.89 percent from 37,515 in February last year, U-Car data showed. Sales of imported luxury cars, led by Mercedes-Benz, plummeted about 45 percent to 3,109 units last month from 5,663 units in the previous month,
RSS