TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol (PIA) – If there is any way a community can do to tame a surging price increase, it is by flooding the local supply chain with home grown food options.
The recent monthly inflation rate press conference of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed that in Bohol, headline inflation for March 2024 decelerated to 3.2 percent from 4.0 percent last month, an achievement pegged as 0.5 percent points lower than the national and is even with the regional inflation rate this month.
As to the drivers upon which the slowdown could be attributed, the PSA cites lower inflation in housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels and slower annual up-movement in the prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages are the main influencers, points out Bohol PSA provincial statistician Jessamyn Anne Alcazaren.
While housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels registered a -2.3 percent inflation rate from 0.2 percent in February, inflation in food and non-alcoholic beverages ebbed from 6.7 percent to 6.4 percent this March.
Prices in housing and basic utilities may have behaved well with a -2.1 percent inflation movement in a month, and food and non-alcoholic beverages at 0.3 percent ebb, the latter constitute 76..11 percent, amplifying the consumer price index movement.
PSA noted a decrease in the price index of fish and other sea food at -5.6. This was at 1.4 percent last month.
With the open fishing season now allowing fishers to harvest the replenished fish stocks in the regional fishing areas and with fish spilling over to Bohol seas, the presence of cheap mackerel, tunafish and herring or sardines in markets drove the prices down.
Rice, although a few days past its harvest, behaved slightly well with 24.6 percent annual increase from 25.4 percent in February.
This could also mean that even if the price inflation behaved relatively well in March, it was still way below the expectations, which could have pulled the price inflation way below.
Rice harvest would have been much better, if not for the long dry spell, which has contributed largely to the inflation rate, agriculture authorities said.
The El Nino could still be pinned as the influencer for the increase in corn price from 6.9 percent in February to 8.1 percent, the PSA data showed.
In the case of fruits and nuts, the inflation rate from 15.5 percent in February to 11.5 percent in March of this year tells the same story.
In meat and other parts of slaughtered land animals, the farmer’s compulsion to sell and salvage on what can be done to the livestock in the drought could have pushed the prices up again, from 5.7 percent in February to 7.8 percent in March.
With the African Swine Fever still threatening the region and with traders and businessmen relishing on the cheap local prices of live hogs, a local group of growers, noting how the opportunists cashed in on the cheap market, has decided to sell higher, enough to allow them to recover their production costs.
Vegetables, tubers, bananas and pulses also inched their prices up a weeny bit with a -19.2 percent from a -26.0 percent in February. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
