Guimaras’ October inflation moves quicker to 3.6 pct

Guimaras province’s inflation rate for October 2021 moved quicker to 3.6 percent, faster by 0.3 percentage points against October 2020 and September 2021 at 3.3 percent each.

This is based on the result of the Retail Prices Survey (RPS) conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

“The data implied that the costs of goods purchased in October of this year were 3.6 percent higher than the prices of products purchased in October 2020 and in September 2021,” Provincial Statistics Officer Nelida B. Losare said.

The 3.6 inflation in October 2021 was driven by faster price movements on six commodity group items:

-Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages at 4.0% from -0.8% a year ago;

-Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco at 15.6% from 7.1%;

-Furnishing, Household Equipment and Routine Maintenance of the House at 4.0% from 3.1%;

-Communication (0.1%) from steady inflation;

-Education at 8.6% from 5.1%; and

Restaurant and Miscellaneous Goods and Services at 7.1% from 5.8%.

“Five of eleven commodity group items exhibited slower price changes in October 2021,” Losare said.

Losare also explained that clothing and footwear dropped by half from 4.4% in October 2020 to 2.2 in October 2021.

Housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels remained steady at 3.6% just like in October 2020.

“Health commodity group dropped by 2.8 percentage points at 2.4% from 5.2% inflation; Transport at 10.4% from 11.8%; and Recreation and Culture at 0.1% from 0.2% in October 2020. The 2.8 percentage points decrement on health commodity group was mainly pushed by the slower price index of Medical Products, Appliances and Equipment by 0.6 percentage points,” Losare added.

Meanwhile, the Transport commodity group slowed by 0.5 points from 10.9% in October 2020 to 10.4% in October 2021, due to the 9.58 percentage points drop in Transport Services

All commodities are regularly monitored by the PSA which generated an index of 129.4, meaning that an average Guimarasnon household needed PHP29.4 more in October 2021 to buy a basket of goods worth PHP100 in 2012.

“The October year-on-year inflation rate throughout the nine consecutive years, the year 2018 had the fastest rate of 5.2%, and October 2015 had the slowest rate of –1.8%,” Losare said.

October inflation rates from 2013 until 2021 moved at a random and unpredictable pattern.

“Occurrences of higher price change rates were from the year 2016 until 2018,” Losare said.

Data also showed that from –1.8% rate in 2015, inflation climbed to 4.1% in 2016, before slowing down to 2.8% in 2017.

“From a slow 2.8%, it then again swayed higher reaching a peak of 5.2% or an increment of 2.4 percentage points, however suddenly slackened by 2.3 percentage points in 2019, at a recorded rate of 2.9%,” Losare said.

“From then, the rate of price change gradually increased by 0.4 percentage points in 2020 and a 0.3 percentage points faster in October 2021 at 3.6% inflation,” Losare added.