Inflation further dips to 2.6% in March, NSO reports

The National Statistics Office (NSO) on Wednesday announced that the country’s inflation–the rate at which prices of goods and services moved–dipped for the fifth consecutive month to 2.6 percent in March and from last February’s 2.7 percent inflation.

 

The move of commodity prices for March was within the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas target forecast at 2.2 percent to 3.1 percent.

 

The March inflation was almost half of the average 4.7 percent for the whole of 2011 and the 4.8 percent for March last year.

 

According to NSO, the dip in inflation was due to “slower” increases in the main basket of goods such alcoholic beverages and tobacco, clothing and footwear, housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, transport, recreation and culture, and restaurants and miscellaneous goods and services.

Prices unchanged outside MM Inflation in the National Capital Region (NCR) was slightly higher to 2.7 percent from February’s 2.3 percent. It was also 1 percentage point higher in the nationwide inflation.

 

“This was due to the higher annual increase in the heavily-weighted food and non-alcoholic beverage index,” the state-run statistics agency said.

 

In areas outside NCR, inflation was practically unchanged and the nationwide rate was at 2.6 percent from 2.8 percent in February.

 

Same as in March 2007 Almost all indices in all commodity baskets outside Metro Manila posted slower increments except for sectors such as health, education, furnishing, household equipment and routine maintenance of houses. 

The March inflation was at the same level as the rise in commodity prices in the same month in 2007–before the global economic crisis hit in 2008. —Rouchelle Dinglasan/VS, GMA News