Guimaras’ food inflation spikes to 3.6% in September

The year-on-year inflation or annual rate of change in price levels for food in Guimaras since June 2021 continues to spike and peaked at 3.6 percent in September 2021 due to faster price movements in four commodity group items.

The island-province’s inflation rates continually increased from a laggard 0.5 percent in June to 1.8 percent in July, 3 percent in August, and 3.6 percent in September.

Comparing inflation trends in Guimaras from September 2020 to September 2021, the current 3.6 percent rate is the fastest so far – 2.7 percentage points faster than the -0.9% inflation in September 2020 and 0.6 percentage quicker than August 2021.

The last four months of 2020 posted slower inflation, from -0.9 percent in September 2020 to 0.5 percent in December. (See Figure 1)

“Inflation in 2021 started at a slower pace of -0.5 percent in January, which jumped to 2 percent in February but dropped to 0.1 percent in March and further to -0.6 percent in April 2021, the slowest rate so far for nine months of 2021, due to slower increase in prices of seven food commodity items. From then, inflation moved a bit faster to 0.5 percent in June until it hit the 3.6% inflation rate in September,” Provincial Statistics Officer Nelida B. Losare said.

Losare added that the four food commodity group items that posted faster inflation in September were:

• Vegetables, from 1.3% to 8.9%
• Sugar, Jam, Honey, Chocolate and Confectionery, from 1.7% to 2.4%
• Milk, Cheese, and Eggs, from 2.1% to 3.1%, and
• Other Cereals, Flour, Cereal Preparation, Bread, Pasta and Other Bakery Products, from a steady rate of 0.0% to 0.4%

MONTH-ON-MONTH FOOD INFLATION

The monthly rate of change in the prices of food commodities moved a bit slower in September 2021 to 0.3 percent from 0.4 percent in August of the same year due to slower price movements of three food commodity items.

The decrease in prices of Bread and Cereals (-0.2%), Meat (-0.6%), Fish (-2.1%), and unchanged prices on Oils and fats slowed food inflation in last month.

The decrease in heavily weighted food commodity items tempered inflation and slackened by 0.1 percentage points despite changes in the prices of six food commodity items:

• Bread and Cereals at -0.2 percent from -0.5 percent in August 2021
• Other Cereals, Flour, Cereal Preparation, Bread, Pasta and Other Bakery Products at 0.9 from -0.2 percent a month ago.
• Milk, Cheese, and Eggs at 0.6 percent from 0.4 percent
• Fruits at 1.9 percent from 1.0 percent
• Vegetables at 9.1 percent from -0.6 percent, and
• Food Products N.E.C. at 1.7 percent from -0.8 percent in August 2021

As shown in Figure 2, the 3.2 percent inflation rate in February 2021 was the fastest food inflation for 13 months which jumped by 2.9 percentage points from a low of 0.3 percent in January brought about by the price increments of all food commodity items.

“Following February with the fastest rate of price changes are November and December at 0.8 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively, while slowed rate of price change at  -1.0 percent and -0.9 percent, were seen in May and March, respectively, Losare added.