• Sept inflation seen to remain at 6.4%

The September inflation is expected to remain at 6.4 percent due to the high prices of food items, the Department of Finance (DOF) said yesterday.

In his latest economic bulletin, Finance Undersecretary and chief economist Gil Beltran said inflation on a month-onmonth basis likely slowed down to 0.6 percent last September, while the year-on-year (YOY) inflation rate may settle at 6.4 percent.

Beltran said the year-onyear inflation rate would be unchanged from the 6.4 percent recorded last August, still the highest in nine years. However, this would be higher than the three percent headline inflation in September last year.

“In September, month-onmonth (MOM) price increase decelerated from 0.9 percent in August to 0.6 percent. September year-on-year (YOY) inflation is seen at 6.4 percent, unchanged from August,” Beltran said.

According to Beltran, price increases in food items likely remained the main drivers of inflation last September.

These are led by vegetables, whose prices may have increased by 19.4 percent yearon-year, followed by fish at 12.27 percent, rice at 10 percent and meat at 8.24 percent.

Meanwhile, Beltran said the price increase of non-food items likely slowed down to 3.73 percent, due to the decline in power rates last September.

He said the electricity, gas, and other fuels index is expected to settle at 8.13 percent, lower than the 11.36 percent recorded the previous month.

Going forward, Beltran said the strong actions of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), as seen by the back-toback 50 basis point rate hikes of the Monetary Board, and the Cabinet’s reforms to remove non-tariff barriers on major food items would help moderate inflation in the short-term.

“Policy reforms, including rice tariffication and budget support for agricultural productivity programs will stem similar inflation episodes in the future,” he said.

Inflation hit a nine-year high of 6.4 percent in August, bringing the year-to-date headline inflation to 4.8 percent. This is higher than the government’s target range of two to four percent.

Economic managers said supply issues on rice, fish, vegetable and meat products were among the main contributors to inflation.