Here’s A Possible Factor That Could’ve Brought The Inflation Rate To 3.2%
HIGHER PRICES – Malacañang, last Wednesday, that the slight increase in inflation rate was due to higher costs of food, rent and utilities as well as fuel.
In a previous post, the inflation rate went up by a small number after six months of continuous decrease. From 3 % last April, the recorded inflation rate in May was at 3.2%.
Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) revealed this information during a press briefing.
National Statistician Claire Dennis Mapa explained the sudden hike of the inflation rate and the reason behind the occurrence in a statement:
“The uptrend was primarily brought about by higher annual rates posted in the heavily weighted food and nonalcoholic beverages index at 3.4 percent; and housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels index at 3.3 percent.”
Indices of some goods and services were observed to have been affected by slow yearly increase in rates. For tobacco and alchololic beverages (9.5 percent), for transportation (3.5 percent), restaurant and miscellaneous goods and services (3.3 percent).
Other commodities and their respective product groups had stable prices.
Bangko Sentral ng Piliinas (BSP), after alleviating difficulties in the monetary policy recently regarding the inflation downtrend, considered the presented data as a “temporary phenomenon.”
Benjamin Diokno – Governor of BSP – sent a text message to media reporters saying that the recent hike “…cannot be seen as an acceleration.”
He explains the data further in his statement which read:
“One data point does not constitute a trend … The inflation rate in May is within BSP’s forecasts of 2.8-3.6 percent for the month.”
This is based on an article from Inquirer.
Dikno also claimed that regulators foresees the inflation rate being around 2 percent by the third quarte of 2019.
That is all there is to it, at least for now. We’ll post updates as soon as we got them.
