ILOILO City – Prices of goods and services continue to rise in Aklan as the province reached an 8.1-percent inflation rate in September – from only 2 percent a year ago.
Aklan’s inflation rate is only the second highest in Western Visayas. Negros Occidental’s inflation reached 9.1 percent last month.
But the inflation rates of both provinces exceeded the national average at 6.7 percent and the regional rate at 7.6 percent, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The uptrend in Aklan’s inflation was attributed to the 24.1-percent increase in alcoholic beverages and tobacco, 11-percent rise on transport, and 10.9-percent spike in food and non-alcoholic beverages.
This is further fueled by the acceleration of indices in recreation and culture (8.3 percent), restaurants and miscellaneous goods and services (6.8 percent), furnishings, household equipment and housing maintenance (5.4 percent), clothing and footwear (5.0 percent), health (3.4 percent), housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (2.6 percent), and communication (1.0).
Only education went down at 21.1 percent.
On a monthly basis, consumer prices slightly notched up 0.8 percent, from 1.8 percent during in August.
Most commodities retained its previous month’s rates except for Food and non-alcoholic beverages with 1.5-percent increase, transport with 1 percent, HWEG and other fuels with 0.4 percent, and alcoholic beverages and tobacco with 0.3 percent.
Food index was pushed by the uptick in corn (3.7 percent), fish (3.4 percent), vegetables (2.6 percent), rice (1.7 percent), sugar and related products (1.6 percent), bread and cereals (1.4 percent), fruit (1.0 percent), non-alcoholic beverages (0.5 percent), milk, cheese, and eggs (0.4 percent), meat (0.4 percent), food products NEC (0.4 percent), oils and fats (0.3 percent), and flour and other bakery products (0.2 percent).
As a result of inflation, Aklan’s purchasing power was pegged at P0.84 in September, which means that the same basket of goods and services worth P84.00 in 2012 can now be bought for P100. (With a report from PSA-Aklan/PN)
