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Headline inflation declined to a four-month low of 2.3 percent year-on-year in September, but the lack of public transportation, especially in Metro Manila, pushed transportation costs to a 22-month high, hurting the most. poor households.
National Statistician Claire Dennis Map said at a news conference Tuesday that lower food prices caused in part the slowest rate of increase in commodity prices last month, leading to the average late in September to 2.5 percent, well within the government’s target of 2 to 4 percent. rank.
During the remaining months of the year, inflation will likely remain in the 2.4 to 2.5 percent band, Mapa said.
Vegetable and rice prices were either deflated or declined year-on-year by 2.7 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively, the latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.
In the case of rice, last month’s deflation was the seventeenth month in a row that retail prices of the Philippine staple food fell compared to the previous year’s levels.
However, rice prices in Metro Manila rose for the second month in a row, posting 1.6 percent inflation last September, even as prices in areas outside the National Capital Region (NCR) remained lower. year with year.
Mapa said the rise in rice prices in the capital could be attributed to higher transportation and delivery costs, which rose last month.
Transportation inflation in September rose to 8.3 percent year-on-year, the highest since 8.9 percent in November 2018, when world oil prices hit record highs, Mapa noted.
At NCR, freight costs rose 11.5 percent faster year-over-year, while prices outside of NCR also increased 7.3 percent.
Last month, the rate for tricycles soared 45.7 percent year-on-year; the collective taxi fare, 5.3 percent, and the bus fare, 4.5 percent.
Mapa said the trike fare had gotten more expensive, averaging P18.60 per person in September from just P8.50 a year ago amid social distancing restrictions, as well as a lack of other mass transit options. .
The increase in the transport fare hit the households in the bottom 30 percent the hardest, whose consumer price index inflation rate was 2.8 percent higher last September.
In particular, transportation inflation among the poor rose 16.3 percent year-on-year last month, PSA data showed.
Since April, when most of the country underwent the longest and strictest COVID-19 lockdown in the region, inflation among the poor has exceeded national headline inflation.
Poor households bore the heaviest burden when food prices rose bit by bit at the beginning of the quarantine due to supply constraints, and now they were also suffering the most from higher transportation fees, Mapa noted.
Faster transportation inflation meant that the more the poor spend to commute to work consume more of their earnings than they could otherwise spend on other goods and services like food.
If physical distancing requirements are extended through the end of the year, travelers should expect these prevailing high transportation costs to continue, Mapa warned. INQ
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