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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 6) The increase in prices of basic goods slowed in March, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported on Tuesday.
Inflation settled at 4.5% for the month, milder than the 4.7% in February but quicker than 2.5% a year ago.
March’s inflation is within the 4.2% to 5.0% forecast range of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for the month.
BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno earlier cited the downward adjustment in Meralco power rates, lower prices of key food items due to supply conditions and the implementation of price ceilings on meat products as main sources of downward price pressures in March. However, he noted higher oil prices and a peso depreciation may “partly offset” these factors.
Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua
The country’s headline inflation slowed from 4.7 percent (on-year) in February to 4.5 percent last month, its first easing since September last year due mostly to declines in food prices.
The latest inflation reading, however, remained above the 2.5 percent registered in March 2020 and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) target range of 2.0 percent to 4.0 percent for 2021.
Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua welcomed the slowing inflation, adding that the government expects the succeeding rates will soon align with their targets as a result of proactive interventions.
“We will continue to address supply issues and logistics bottlenecks to ensure price stability, especially for food and essential goods,” Chua said in a statement.
Published April 6, 2021, 6:29 PM
Vaccination efforts in areas experiencing a rapid increase in new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases will be ramped up so they can immediately achieve herd immunity, the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 bared Tuesday, April 6.
NTF chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr. said they are eyeing the immediate vaccination of 70 percent of the population in the National Capital Region (NCR), the epicenter of the pandemic in the country, to contain the pandemic.
NCR has a population of 12.88 million in 2015, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), which means that 70 percent of its population is around nine million.
“Yes, that is one of our strategies. According to experts, the private sector, and former secretaries of the DOH [Department of Health], we need to concentrate in populous areas,” Galvez said at a virtual press briefing.
Published April 6, 2021, 3:00 PM
Several agriculture lobby groups jointly appealed for President Rodrigo Duterte to withdraw his recommendation to increase the Minimum Access Volume (MAV) for pork by 350,000 metric tons (MT) as this may cause further damage to the local hog industry.
The groups also asked Duterte to shelve another proposal of the Department of Agriculture (DA) which is to bring down the tariff on pork imports.
MB FILE photo. (Jansen Romero)
“ASF has caused serious harm, Mr. President, but the proposals of the DA are fatal blows that could slowly kill the hog industry
. Double dead po ang sektor namin pagnatuloy ang mga proposals na ito, Mr. President [our sector will end up double dead if DA’s proposals are approved,” groups said.
The numbers are disheartening.
Last April 2 the country logged a total of 15,310 new COVID-19 cases (3,790 of which were backlogs). The following day the number of new cases was 12,576 which brought our active cases to a staggering 165,715. These numbers might still climb before we feel the real effect of the most recent lockdown imposed by government.
The lockdown has resulted in unemployment. The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported last week that the unemployment rate has increased to 8.8 percent in February compared to January’s 8.7 percent rate. Some might say that the .1 percentage point uptick is negligible but that actually represents 234,000 people who lost their jobs. And if we assume an average family size of 4, that .1 percent increase means 936,000 people have been affected by job losses this pandemic. All in all, a total of 4.187 million are without work.