Costly rice in Guimaras spurs food inflation to 10.5 pct in Oct ‘22

Costly rice in Guimaras spurred food inflation in October 2022 to 10.5 percent, higher by 1.3 percentage points than the 9.2 percent in September 2022 and 8.4 percent faster than the 2.1 inflation in October 2021, based on the Retail Price Survey of Commodities for the Generation of Consumer Price Index of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

“Rice commodity with an inflation rate of 5.5 percent in October shared 57.4 percent to inflation trend,” Provincial Statistics Officer Nelida B. Losare said.

“Likewise, the 29.4 inflation of Vegetables, tubers, plantains, cooking bananas and pulses; and the 44.6 annual price increment of sugar, confectionery, and desserts cut a 20.3 and 8.3 percent to the October 2022 food inflation, respectively,” Losare added.

Other food items which contributed to the uptrend in the October 2022 food inflation: Milk, other dairy products, and eggs (6.2%); Fish and other seafood (8.6%); Ready-Made Food and Other Food Products N.E.C. (5.6%); Oils and fats (20.6%); and Cereal and cereal products (5.6%).

Food inflation rates for 2021 demonstrated rising rates, starting at 2.1 percent in October and continuously rising until 5.4 percent inflation in December, the highest level of inflation for the year, (See Figure 1).

“In 2022, food inflation started at a rate of 9.4 percent and suddenly dropped to 3.2 percent in February. From then, the data showed a continuous uptrend from March to August with 12.1 percent food inflation which was the highest rate recorded in 10 months,” Losare said.

The data also showed that food inflation surged in October 2022 after dropping by 9.2 percent in September 2022, the second time since February 2022, when it declined by 3.2 percent. (See figure 1)

“The average food price changes for the first ten months of the current year stood at 8.3 percent, the highest average food inflation since 2019, while the slowest average food inflation was seen in 2021 at -0.3%,” Losare said.

 “The highest food inflation rate in 2022 was at 12.1% recorded in August, while the highest rate in 2019, was at 8.6% in the first three months, 5.1 percent in April 2020, and 5.4 percent in December 2021.” (See Table 3)