JORDAN, Guimaras – Guimaras’ annual rate of change in the prices of food climbed to 3.0% in August 2021, the fastest food inflation in 13 months, pushed upward by the faster annual increment on the prices of the five heavily weighted food commodity items.
As disclosed by the Philippine Statistics Authority, food items recording higher marks up in August 2021 over its 2020 prices that contributed to the swift movement of inflation rate were the following:
* meat – at 16.1% from -6.9% a year ago
* fish – at 10.8% from 3.1%
* oils and fats – at 8.4% from 6.7%
*vegetables – at 1.3% from -4.5%
* sugar, jam, honey, chocolate, and confectionery – at 1.7% from 1.2%
Compared to the July annual rate of change, only three food commodity groups exhibited higher price change compared to August 2021, namely:
* other cereals, flour, cereal preparation, bread, pasta and other bakery products at 0.2%
* meat at 16.6%
* and oils and fats at 9.3%
Comparing inflation trends of Guimaras for 13 months – from August 2020 to August 2021 – the current 3.0% inflation rate is the fastest rate of change, 2.8 percentage points faster than the 0.2% recorded in August 2020 and 1.2 percentage points quicker than in July 2021, said Provincial Statistics Officer Nelida Losare.
The last five months of 2020 exhibited slower inflation reaching 0.5% only and recorded deflated rate of -1.2% in October.
In 2021, the annual rate of change started at a slower rate of -0.5% in January, which jumped to 2.0% in February but slid to 0.1% in March until -0.6% in April 2021, the slowest rate so far for the first eight months of 2021.
From then, inflation moved a bit faster at 0.2% in May continually speeding up to 0.5% in June to 1.8% in July until it hits the 3.0% rate in August.
“The 3.0% inflation in August 2021 is the fastest rate of price movements for 13 months influenced by the price hikes on the five basics food commodity items which may be avoidably by increasing staple food supply for locally produced food items,” Losare said.
Losare also cited that some of the primary food commodity items like vegetable, fish, and meat supplies came from Iloilo, which have entailed value-added costs of handling to Guimaras. (PSA)/PN
