BAGUIO CITY – The Cordillera office of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA-CAR) revealed that the prices of goods and services in the region or the so-called inflation rate rose by 2.3 percent In October 2017 compared to the same period last year.
In a report released to the media recently, the PSA-CAR reported that Mountain Province posted the highest inflation rate at 3.8% followed by Ifugao at 2.9% and Kalinga at 2.6%.
The PSA-CAR added inflation surpassed the October 2017 rate for Apayao, Benguet and Mountain Province, while other provinces had lower inflation rates in the same period this year as compared to the same month last year.
By commodity, the report stated the year-on-year inflation rate of the heavily weighted food and non-alcoholic beverages index in the region accelerated at 2.4% from 1.5% in the previous month.
The PSA-CAR report stipulated the alcoholic beverages and tobacco had the highest inflation among other commodities in the region with 8% increase, followed by education, and clothing and footwear, both garnering a 3.5% increase.
On the other hand, the PSA-CAR noted inflation rates for health, communication and education were the same last year thereby registering a stable increase.
Further, fish which recorded an inflation rate of 5.7, meat which recorded an inflation rate of 5% and corn which registered an inflation rate of 4.3% persisted to have the top three highest price increases in October this year.
In a related development, vegetables, sugar, jam, honey, chocolate and confectionery, and food products not elsewhere classified consecutively incurred negative inflation of 0.1%, 1.6%, and 5.2%, respectively.
With regards the purchasing power of the peso, the PSA-CAR cited that the value of the peso in the region was at P0.68 in October this year which dropped by P0.02 from the P0.70 recorded purchasing power of the peso during the same period last year.
The PSA-CAR explained that P1 in October 2006 is worth P.68 in October this year or a basket of goods that can be bought at P100 in 2006 is worth P147 in October this year.
According to the report, the purchasing power of the peso in all the provinces generally weakened this year as compared to the same period the previous year considering that Apayao had the highest peso value at P0.75, followed by Abra at P0.72, and Kalinga at P0.70.
Consequently, Mountain Province had the lowest peso value at P0.63 which shoes that the inflation rate in the province had significantly dropped over the reckoning period.
The PSA-CAR emphasized that inflation rate is the rate of change in the average price level between two periods year-on-year or month-on-month as measured by the consumer price index while the purchasing power of the peso measures how much the peso in the reference year is worth in another year.
Moreover, the base year is the reference point of the index number series at which the index number is set to zero while market basket refers to a sample of goods and services used to represent all goods and services produced or bought.
By HENT
