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Philippine inflation jumps to 1.9 pct in June

Xinhua, July 5, 2016 Adjust font size:

Philippine inflation rose to 1.9 percent in June, owing to the effects of El Nino and increase in oil prices, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said Tuesday.

The June inflation is within the local central bank's forecast of 1.5-2.4 percent and the median market expectation of 1.9 percent, and higher than the 1.6 percent in the previous month.

Inflation for the first half of the year averaged at 1.3 percent.

"The hike in inflation can be attributed to the residual effects of the weakening El Nino and the slight recovery of oil prices,"said Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia.

"But the inflation trend in the first six months of 2016 was manageable. This is expected to continue for the rest of the year against a backdrop of expanding productive capacity of the domestic economy and persistently low oil prices," the cabinet official said.

Rising prices in housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels drove inflation in the non-food group to 0.9 percent. Inflation in June also adjusted to the rise of oil prices for 2016.

"International oil prices have yet to recover, but as global demand improves alongside the pressures brought by the Canada wild fires and the political unrest in Nigeria, the biggest oil exporter in Africa, oil prices have reached its highest level in 2016,"the official said.

Pernia said government should start preparing for the upcoming La Nina while farmers recover from the impact of the El Nino phenomenon.

"We should intensify monitoring the status of flood control projects and the clearing of drains and waterways. We also need to improve the agriculture logistics chain by constructing more bridges to connect farming areas separated from markets by rivers that are non-traversable during the rainy days,"the NEDA director-general added. Endit