Taiwan's CPI may grow less than 2-percent in 2008
Officials at the Council for Economic Planning and Development are saying that the nation's consumer price index may grow by less than 2-percent in 2008 -- as crude oil prices on the world market are expected to drop next year.
According to Thomas Yeh ... the Vice Chairman of the C-E-P-D .... the country's C-P-I growth rate will increase by no more than 2-percent as global research shows that international crude oil prices next year should slip to a level between 73.5 and 76 U-S dollars per barrel -- a level lower than this year's prices which have surged to more than 96 U-S dollars per barrel in recent days.
Yeh added that although Taiwan's C-P-I jumped by a 5.34-percent in October from the year-earlier level -- the largest single-month increase in nearly 13 years -- this year's overall rate will hover between 1.7 and 1.8-percent given that the country's C-P-I growth rate for the first 10 months averaged a relatively low level of 1.35-percent.