Inflation rate in Eastern Visayas increases further to 6.5% in September 2018

By PSA-8
October 16, 2018

TACLOBAN CITY – The Inflation Rate (IR) of Eastern Visayas continued to increase at 6.5% in September 2018. This IR was 0.4 percentage point higher compared with the 6.1% IR a month ago, and 3.0 percentage points higher than the recorded 3.5% IR in the same period last year. The regional inflation rate was 0.2 percentage point lower than the 6.7% national average in September 2018.

Southern Leyte, recorded the highest increase of 1.4 percentage points, from 1.8% in August 2018 to 3.2% in September 2018. It is still, however, the lowest IR among the provinces during the reference period. Eastern Samar, on the other hand, posted the highest IR at 8.9% (Table 1).

Among commodity groups, housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels registered the highest increase of 0.8 percentage points. It was posted at 6.1% in September 2018 from 5.3% in August 2018. This can be attributed to the huge increase in the index of water supply and miscellaneous services relating to the dwelling.

The heavily weighted food and non-alcoholic beverages went up to 9.2% in September 2018 from its previous month’s rate of 8.6%, an increase of 0.6 percentage point. This can be traced to faster price increases of corn, rice, non-alcoholic beverages, meat, and sugar, jam, honey, chocolate and confectionery products (Table 2).

Inflation rate for furnishings, household equipment and routine maintenance of the house slowed down to 2.6% during the reference month, 1.2 percentage point lower compared with the 3.8% IR in August 2018. Similarly, alcoholic beverages and tobacco went down by 0.6 percentage point but still recorded a double digit IR at 21.2%, the highest among all commodities.

Education and communication, meanwhile, retained their previous month’s rate of -16.2% and 0.3%, respectively.

The Purchasing Power of Peso (PPP) of the region was recorded at P0.80 in September 2018. This PPP implies that goods and services worth 100 pesos in September 2018 only costs 80 pesos in 2012.

Southern Leyte registered a minimal decrease of 0.02 centavo in its PPP in September 2018 compared with its P0.83 PPP a month ago. Eastern Samar, Leyte and Samar each recorded a 0.01 centavo decrease in PPP from August 2018 to September 2018, while the rest of the provinces sustained their PPP from last month. Leyte recorded the strongest PPP at P0.83 while Northern Samar and Samar posted the weakest PPP at P0.75.