GUIMARAS – Year-on-year inflation – the annual rate of change in price levels of food – rose for five straight months, climbing to a 4.1% peak in October, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.
The inflation was pushed upward by the faster annual increment on the prices of the six heavily weighted food commodity items.
Comparing inflation trends of Guimaras for 13 months from October 2020 to October 2021, the current 4.1% inflation rate is the fastest rate of change – 5.3 percentage points faster than the recorded -1.2% inflation in October 2020 and 0.5 percentage points quicker than September 2021.
“The last three months of 2020 got slower inflation, from a slump of -1.2% in October 2020 to a rise of 0.5% in December,” said Provincial Statistics Office’s Nelida Losare.
Losare also explained that the food inflation in Guimaras in 2021 was erratic. It started at a lower rate of -0.5% in January, jumped to 2.0% in February, slid to 0.1% in March until it plopped to -0.6% in April 2021 which is the slowest rate of the province for 10 consecutive months of the current year.
From then, inflation moved a bit faster to 0.5% in June and continually escalated until it hit the 4.1% inflation rate in October 2021.
Food commodity items which recorded higher markups in October 2021 over its 2020 prices that contributed to the swift movement of the inflation rate were the following:
* Meat – at 16.8% from -8.2% a year ago
* Fish – at 10.2% from 2.9%
* Milk, Cheese, and Eggs – at 2.5% from 2.0%
* Fruit – at 2.4% from -4.7%
* Vegetables – at 13.1% from -5.0% in October 2020
* Sugar, Jam, Honey, Chocolate, and Confectionery – at 2.2% from 0.2%
For the monthly rate of change in the prices of food commodities, October 2021 prices dropped to an average of -0.5 percent from the 0.3 percent in September of the same year, pulled down by the slower price movements of five food commodity items, namely:* Bread and Cereals – at -0.4% from -3.7% a month ago
* Rice – at -5.0% from -4.6%
* Milk, Cheese and Eggs – at 2.5% from 3.1%
* Oils and Fats – at 5.0% from 6.1%
* Sugar, Jam, Honey, Chocolate, and Confectionery – at 2.2% from 2.4%
Despite the 0.8 percentage points dropped from September 2021 to October 2021, four food commodity items moved a bit faster, specifically:
* Fish – at 10.2% from 9.1% a month ago
* Fruit – at 2.4% from 1.3%
* Vegetables – at 13.1% from 8.9%, and
* Food Products N.E.C. – at 2.4% from -1.9% in September 2021.
“The 3.2% inflation rate in February 2021 was the fastest food inflation of Guimaras province for 13 months which soared by 2.9 percentage points from a low of 0.3% in January brought about by the price increments of all food commodity items,” Losare said.
“November and December 2020 also recorded a faster rate of price change with 0.8 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively, while the slower rate of price change at -0.9 and -0.5 was seen in March and October, respectively,” she added./PN
