The Philippines’ headline inflation, which is the total inflation rate or increase in prices of an economy, reflecting the change in prices for all goods and services, including volatile items like food and energy, steadied in October at 1.7 percent on slower rise in food prices.
This means, the inflation rate was unchanged from September’s 1.7 percent but lower than October 2024’s 2.3 percent.
The October inflation rate also brought the country’s average inflation rate for the first ten months of the yea at 1.7 percent. It was within the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas forecast range of 1.4 percent to 2.2 percent.
National Statistician and PSA Undersecretary Dennis Mapa attributed the steady overall inflation rate to slower increase in food prices in October, rising only at 0.3 percent compared to 0.8 percent in September, primarily due to slower increases in vegetable, meat, and egg prices.
PSA data showed reduced year-on-year increase in vegetables at 16.6 percent from 19.4 percent in September. Meat inflation slowed to 5.2 percent in October, down from 6.0 percent in the previous month.
But the PSA report showed upward pressure from the housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels where annual inflation rate accelerated to 5.6 percent in October from 4.7 percent in September.
In terms of regional inflation rates, the National Capital Region (NCR) accelerated to 2.9 percent from 2.7 percent in September, largely due to faster housing and fuel price increases.
For areas outside the NCR, PSA showed that rate slowed to 1.3 percent from 1.5 percent in September.
Meantime, core inflation accelerated slightly to 2.5 percent from 2.4 percent in September, and remained within the central bank’s target range. Core inflation is a measure of inflation that excludes volatile items like food and energy prices to show the underlying, long-term price trend.
