The consumer price index (CPI) last month showed a 1.82 percent rise from a year earlier, the lowest in eight months and below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food costs held relatively stable, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The inflationary gauge is likely to hover below the 2 percent level going forward, in the absence of major abnormal surprises, despite Typhoon Krathon earlier this month and the recent rise in international oil prices, DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) said.
“The crop damage wreacked by Typhoon Krathon is not as serious as that left by typhoons a year earlier,” Tsao said.
Photo: CNA
Food costs last month grew a moderate 3 percent, as fruit prices rose 17.37 percent, but vegetable prices decreased 4.21 percent and egg prices declined 15.49 percent, the DGBAS said.
The core CPI, a more reliable long-term price tracker because it strips out volatile items, increased 1.79 percent, virtually unchanged from one month earlier and affirming a stable consumer price trend, the statistics agency said, adding that the CPI value after seasonal adjustments gained 0.38 percent.
However, the public might still feel the pinch because dining out prices climbed 2.98 percent, rents increased 2.5 percent, and medicine and healthcare prices rose 2.61 percent from a year earlier, Tsai said.
Shelter prices also expanded 2.39 percent, attributable to more expensive home maintenance costs, as well as electricity rate hikes from April onward, while education and entertainment prices added 1.79 percent, DGBAS data showed.
The producer price index (PPI), which measures the price movements of goods from a seller’s perspective, shrank 0.33 percent year-on-year last month, owing to price corrections for international fuel, food and electronic components, the agency said.
In the first nine months of this year, the CPI grew 2.26 percent, while the PPI rose by 1.47 percent from the same period of last year, it said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
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The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
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