GUIMARAS – The year-on-year inflation or rate of change in price levels for food here spiked to 3.6% in September, driven by faster price movements in four commodity group items, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Inflation in the last four months continually increased, from a slower pace of 0.5% in June to 1.8% a month after, moving faster to 3.0% in August and speedily reached 3.6% in September.
Comparing inflation trends for 13 months (September 2020 to 2021), the current 3.6% inflation rate is the fastest rate of change – 2.7 percentage points faster than the recorded -0.9% inflation in September 2020 and 0.6 percentage quicker than in August 2021.
The last four months of 2020 got slower inflation, from a slump of -0.9% in September 2020 to a rise of 0.5% in December. See Figure 1.
Inflation in 2021 started at a slower pace of -0.5% in January, which jumped to 2.0% in February but dropped to 0.1% in March until it felled to -0.6% in April 2021, the slowest rate so far for nine months of 2021 pulled down by the slowed prices of seven food commodity items.
From then, inflation moved a bit faster at 0.5% in June continued speeding up until it hit the 3.6% inflation rate in September, said Provincial Statistics Officer Nelida Losare/
Losare also elaborated that the four food commodity group items that exhibited a faster rate of change in September included the following:
* vegetables – from 1.3% to 8.9%
* sugar, jam, honey, chocolate, and confectionery – from 1.7% to 2.4%
* milk, cheese and eggs – from 2.1% to 3.1%
* other cereals, flour, cereal preparation, bread, pasta and other bakery products – from a steady rate of 0.0% to 0.4%
MONTH-ON-MONTH FOOD INFLATION
The monthly rate of change in the prices of food commodities moved a bit slower in September 2021 to 0.3 percent from a rise of 0.4 percent in August of the same year, pulled down by the slower price movements of three food commodity items.
The decreased prices on bread and cereals (-0.2%), Meat (-0.6%), Fish (-2.1%), and the unchanged prices on pils and fats managed to slowed food inflation in September.
The decrease on the heavily weighted food commodity items tempered inflation slowed by 0.1 percentage points despite the price change level on the prices of six food commodity items which included:
* bread and cereals – at -0.2% from -0.5% in august 2021
* other cereals, flour, cereal preparation, bread, pasta and other bakery products – at 0.9 from -0.2 percent a month ago
* milk, cheese, and eggs – at 0.6% from 0.4%
* fruits – at 1.9% from 1.0 percent
* vegetables – at 9.1% from -0.6%
* food products N.E.C. – at 1.7% from -0.8% in August 2021
The 3.2% inflation rate in February 2021 was the fastest food inflation for 13 months which jumped by 2.9 percentage points from a low of 0.3% in January brought about by the price increments of all food commodity items.
“Following February with the fastest rate of price changes are November and December with 0.8 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively, while slowed rate of price change at -1.0% and -0.9%, were seen in May and March, respectively,” Losare said./PN
