TAIPEI: The consumer price index (CPI) edged up 0.28 percent last month from the same period last year, reversing eight months of decline, because rainstorms caused by typhoons drove up vegetable, fruit and meat costs, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The food cost hikes more than offset price falls related to cheaper crude and oil products, the DGBAS report showed.
“Bad weather caused by typhoons Soudelor and Dujuan disrupted vegetable, fruit and meat supplies, driving their prices up,” DGBAS Deputy Director Tsai Yu-tai told reporters at a news conference in Taipei.
Food costs, which constitute 25 percent of consumer prices, climbed 5.85 percent last month from a year earlier, the report said.
Vegetable, fruit and meat prices rose 34.07 percent, 12.6 percent and 2.68 percent respectively, the report said.
The inflationary gauge inched up 0.15 percent after seasonal adjustment, but contracted an average of 0.52 percent for the first nine months, the agency said.
It is the first time the headline CPI yielded a positive value this year even though international crude prices dragged transportation and communications costs by 6.59 percent last month, the report said.
Fuel prices fell 27.22 percent last month, down by more than 20 percent in each of the past 10 months, suggesting base-effect distortions have yet to taper off at variance with the agency’s forecast.
Core CPI, a more reliable measure to track long-term inflationary pressure because it excludes volatile items from the calculation, showed a 0.8 percent increase.
The wholesale price index (WPI), a measure of commercial production costs, retreated 8.57 percent last month, narrowing from the revised 9.44 percent decline in August, the report said.
From January through last month, WPI declined 9.12 percent from the same period last year.
Cheaper crude prices helped weaken exports and imports in US dollar term by 10.81 percent and 18.94 percent respectively, the report said.
The absence of inflationary pressure allowed the central bank last month to cut interest rates by 12.5 basis points to stimulate demand and economic growth as a whole.
