Taiwan’s October producer prices jumped 19.66% from a year earlier, far outpacing consumer inflation, as the Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan), known as the CBC, confirmed intervention amid a reserve decline.
The Directorate General of Budget, Accounting & Statistics (DGBAS) said the consumer price index (CPI) rose 2.33% year over year and 0.06% from September. Core inflation, which excludes fruit, vegetables and energy, was 2.23%. The producer price index (PPI) climbed 1.48% from the previous month. DGBAS linked its annual increase to prices for gas, petroleum and coal products, computers and electronic products, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and electronic components.
FXStreet reported that Commerzbank strategists cited a 2.60% Bloomberg consensus for October CPI, putting the 2.33% result below that reported expectation. The strategists also said higher producer costs could later pass through to consumer prices; that is a risk they identified, not an outcome shown by October’s CPI data.
The CBC reported foreign-exchange reserves of $596.44 billion at the end of October, down $4.31 billion from September. The CBC said its intervention sought to temper market swings linked to volatile capital flows. It also cited reserve-management returns and exchange-rate movements among reserve currencies as factors in the monthly change.
Focus Taiwan, citing Central News Agency (CNA), reported that CBC Foreign Exchange Department head Tsai Chiung-min put foreign institutional investors’ October net outflow at $28 billion, including cash dividends sent abroad. The same report said the Taiwan dollar fell 1.93% against the U.S. dollar and that the CBC sold U.S. dollars and bought Taiwan dollars during the month.
In its third-quarter monetary policy minutes, the CBC forecast CPI inflation of 2.03% in 2026 and 1.83% in 2027, with core inflation at 2.16% and 1.89%, respectively. The CBC’s next reserve release is scheduled for Dec. 4 at 3:20 a.m. ET (08:20 UTC), and DGBAS is scheduled to publish November price indices Dec. 8.
