Train pushes Jan. inflation to 4%
CEBU - Higher food and non-alcoholic beverage prices mainly pushed the country’s inflation rate to four percent in January.
Inflation is the movement of prices of basic goods and services over a period of time.
December 2017’s inflation stood at 3.3 percent. Last month’s inflation was likewise higher compared to the same period last year, which was at 2.7 percent.
“The uptrend was primarily due to the higher annual increment in the heavily-weighted food and non-alcoholic beverages index as it accelerated by 4.5 percent from previous month’s growth of 3.5 percent,” said the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in a report yesterday.
Price movements for alcoholic beverages and tobacco, likewise, registered double-digit annual markup at 12.3 percent in January from 6.4 percent in December.
Faster inflation was also noted on other indices, namely furnishing, household equipment and routine maintenance of the house; health; transport and restaurant and miscellaneous goods and services.
Excluding volatile food and oil, core inflation jumped to 3.9 percent from the previous month’s three percent.
“The higher January 2018 reading was expected by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) although it is at the top end of our forecast for the month. Due mainly to combined first round effects of TRAIN, oil prices, and food to some extent. We think these are temporary drivers of inflation and would eventually stabilize,” said Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr., in a statement.
Espenilla assured that the BSP will be closely monitoring the situation and stands ready to take action based on their evaluation of relevant data.