Taiwan’s inflation remained subdued last month, extending a prolonged period of price stability as falling vegetable and fuel prices continued to offset increases in housing and food-related expenses, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.31 percent from a year earlier last month, marking the eighth consecutive month that inflation stayed below the central bank’s 2 percent target. The benign reading gives policymakers room to keep interest rates on hold, although Taiwan’s resilient — if uneven — economic growth offers little justification for a rate cut.
The latest CPI data reflected a sharp decline in vegetable prices, even as costs for miscellaneous goods and housing continued to climb, DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) said.
Photo: CNA
Vegetable prices plunged 18.2 percent year-on-year last month — the steepest drop in nearly 40 months — after favorable weather conditions boosted supply, Tsao said.
Core CPI, which excludes volatile items and is closely watched as a gauge of underlying inflation, rose 1.83 percent, driven mainly by higher service charges, he said.
Lower international crude oil prices weighed on fuel and transportation costs, which fell 1.36 percent from a year earlier, DGBAS data showed.
Prices for miscellaneous goods climbed 3.34 percent, led by a nearly 15 percent surge in the prices of jewelry and personal accessories.
Housing costs rose 1.86 percent, with rents increasing 1.99 percent — the smallest gain in two-and-a-half years, Tsao said.
CPI this month is expected to ease below the 1 percent mark due to a higher comparison base, as the Lunar New Year holiday fell in January last year, but would occur in February this year, he said.
The producer price index (PPI), which measures price movements at the wholesale level, fell 2.57 percent year-on-year last month, little changed from a 2.61 percent decline the previous month.
The agency attributed the weakness to soft global prices for agricultural products and raw materials amid tepid demand.
Full-year CPI grew 1.66 percent last year — the lowest in five years and the first time in four years that the annual inflation gauge came in below 2 percent, Tsao said.
Full-year PPI declined 1.84 percent, although input cost pressures are building in the technology sector as memory prices surge, he said.
Still, Tsao cautioned that households continue to feel strain from elevated prices for certain essentials.
Average prices for 17 key consumer staples rose 2.57 percent from a year earlier, according to the government’s price-stabilization task force. Egg prices climbed the most, followed by pork and rice, increasing the burden on households that have seen little gains from Taiwan’s GDP growth.
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