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Slower inflation means more Filipinos will be able to purchase food items.
House Speaker Martin Romualdez gave this assessment about the latest Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) report on inflation, which was pegged as 0.9 percent in July.
“The PSA report is a welcome development. It is a piece of good news for all of us, for President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ R. Marcos Jr., for Congress, and especially for our people,” Romualdez, Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (Lakas-CMD) president, said.
The PSA reported that inflation, or the rate of increase in consumer prices, fell significantly to .9 percent last month from 1.4 percent in June, and from 4.4 percent a year ago in July 2024.
“The inflation rate is not just a number. It represents more Filipino families being able to afford rice and basic food items, more Filipinos being able to fight hunger,” said the Speaker.
He said the 0.9 percent inflation last month was "the lowest this year and perhaps in the last six years".
Romualdez credited the Marcos administration and efforts of the House in "successfully taming" inflation.
The House leader noted that in the case of rice, its retail price has been going down since the President took measures to cut import tariff and the House exercised its oversight function to check profiteering, hoarding, price manipulation, and other abusive practices by traders, wholesalers and middlemen.
“We will continue to do oversight to make sure that prices are in check and are kept low, especially that of rice,” noted the Speaker.
He said based on PSA data, the inflation rate stood at 2.9 percent in January before steadily going down to 2.1 percent in February, 1.8 percent in March, 1.4 percent in April, 1.3 percent in May, and 1.4 percent in June.
“We hope to sustain the trajectory of these numbers, or at least keep prices low for our people,” Romualdez added.
Time to roll back low rice tariffs
Meanwhile, Albay 3rd district Rep. Raymond Adrian Salceda, the newly-installed chairman of the House Special Committee on Food Security, says the country is now in a strong enough position to scale back some emergency measures that may have hurt local rice producers, especially the reduced tariff on rice imports.
“I fully commend President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for stabilizing inflation and getting us out of the woods. Now that inflation has eased, especially in food prices, we can afford to go back to policies that give our local farmers a fighting chance,” he said in a separate statement.
The rookie solon noted that food inflation posted an annual decline of 0.5 percent, driven mainly by a 15.9 percent drop in rice prices.
“That level of rice deflation is not sustainable for our farmers. It means farmgate prices are down while input costs are still high. This puts our food security at risk in the long run if farmers decide to plant less or shift to other crops,” Salceda explained.
He called for a calibrated rollback of the lowered rice tariff, which was implemented during last year’s price spikes to protect consumers.
“The purpose of the lower tariff was to bring prices down. Now that prices have dropped, it is only logical to restore tariffs to previous levels to support our rice farmers and maintain local production.”
Salceda pointed out that much of the benefit from the lower tariff went to middlemen, not consumers.
“Traders gained, but farmers bore the losses. That is not a sustainable policy direction.”
