A LITTLE alleviation is up for the country’s poor who are hit hard by the multitude of problems bought by the economy and the long dry spell.
Senator Maria Imelda Josefa Remedios “Imee” Marcos advanced this information speaking to Bohol media at the sidelines of the senator’s visit to Bohol, April 7, 2024.
Already beset by food inflation which eats up a huge share of the family’s income, Marcos, who minutes ago witnessed the formal opening of the Season 2 of the Governor Aristotle Aumentado inter-town Basketball Cup for amateurs, cited the 3.7% increase in inflation recorded for the country in March, 2024.
Apparently the haystack that threatens to break the camel’s back, the inflation is going to hit the bottom poor of the country’s social strata, and could spawn into more social issues if now alleviated.
“Problema talaga ang food inflation, as soon as food prices increase, about 60 percent of the family income goes to it,” Marcos said as she sat beside Bohol Governor Erico Aristotle Aumentado and Congresswoman Vanessa Aumentado in a luncheon press conference in Calape, Bohol.
To this, the senator and elder sister of the president said the government is focusing its help to the food-poor, in the identified hunger spots in the country.
She however did not specify how this is getting implemented.
But she hinted that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Department of Agriculture has P1.3 billion in funds, set aside for this.
Earlier, the Department of Agriculture (DA), basing its data on food access affectation from the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA) is giving out P3,000 cash assistance to fisher folk and P5,000 for rice farmers.
Over the alleged controversies springing from the use of the un-updated lists of the RSBSA, the female former Ilocos governor and congresswoman, said there is a need to fix and update the list.
Rice producing provinces are not receiving much of those financial subsidies, she implied, if only to prove that the government now knows that its scant resources could not even get to where these are needed.
Last year, the DSWD also launched another flagship program in fighting hunger called the Food Stamp Program (FSP).
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s fight hunger under the Food Stamp Program (FSP) could also be used in this climate induced crisis, Bohol DSWD Social Welfare and Development chief Jimmy Crusio said he is still to get the details of how the DSWD can bring the government’s most timely intervention to the food-poor.
As the headline inflation in the country slowly crept to 3.7 percent in March, a little bit higher than the February inflation rate at 3.4 percent, the PSA in Bohol however thinks there is a better picture for the headline inflation in Bohol. From 4.0 percent in February 2024, the government may have tamed the inflation to 3.2 in March.
March of 2023 however was too much harder as inflation rate at that time was 7.8 percent in Bohol.
The inflation down trend in Bohol, according to PSA Provincial Statistician Jessamyne Anne Alcazaren during a recent press conference racking the monthly inflation, is driven by lower inflation in housing, electricity, gas and other fuels as well as the slower annual increase in the price indices of food and non-alcoholic beverages.
She said food inflation slowed down to 6.7 percent in March 2024 from 7.0 percent in February
With the fishing season now open after months of allowing the regional fishing grounds to recover and replenish, fish and other seafood prices in March sagged to -5.6 percent from 1.4 percent in February.
For rice, from 25.4 percent price increase in February, March sees a 24.6 percent inflation rate in March, harvest season.
Harvest is done, we should expect more difficult times, the presidential sister said, hinting more belt tightening measures in the coming months.
Over this, Alcazaren also said that while giving of subsidies could be in the pipeline, cash benefits and food stamps would be helping much of the food-poor, even if it would do hardly something to arrest the wayward inflation noted these days. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
