The consumer price index (CPI) last month gained 2.75 percent year-on-year, mainly because of spikes in food prices amid bad weather, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
Last month’s growth was steeper than the 2.66 percent gain in August, beating some analysts’ expectations that inflation has been tamed.
Heavy rains induced by typhoons and tropical storms resulted in supply disruptions, but related agricultural damage was limited in scale, DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Clare Cheng, Taipei Times
“The pickup in inflation is transitory, caused by bad weather that sent vegetable prices up 12.05 percent from one month earlier,” Tsao said.
The effects of the weather events is expected to ease this month, the official said.
Inflation should have peaked in the second quarter of this year and is expected to further subdue this quarter, Tsao said.
Food prices last month advanced 5.3 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 50 percent of the CPI increase, the DGBAS said.
Food cost increases made people feel the pinch sharply, as prices of frequently purchased items picked up 5.84 percent, the most rapid hike in eight years, Tsao said.
Clothing prices rose 3.56 percent, as retailers offered fewer discounts than they did last year, the DGBAS said.
Transportation and communication costs rose 2.24 percent, as international oil prices grew 3.31 percent, it said.
The cost increase for imported commodities slowed in US dollar terms, but widened nearly 20 percent in New Taiwan dollar terms, because the local currency depreciated against the greenback, Tsao said.
As international oil prices are expected to stabilize, imported inflation would be kept at bay, he said.
The core CPI, a more reliable long-term price tracker because it excludes volatile items, last month climbed 2.79 percent annually, up from 2.74 percent in August, government data showed.
The wholesale price index (WPI), a measure of commercial production costs, increased 12.82 percent annually, up from 11.11 percent in August, as exports and imports became more expensive, the DGBAS said.
The agency is to stop compiling WPI data next year, replacing it with a producer price index to reflect production cost movements, it said.
For the first nine months of this year, the CPI was up 3.06 percent, while the WPI rose 13.7 percent, the DGBAS said.
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