Inflation rate in Eastern Visayas drops to 5.2% in November 2018

By PSA-8
December 7, 2018

TACLOBAN CITY – The Inflation Rate (IR) of Eastern Visayas decreased to 5.2 percent in November 2018. This IR is 1.7 percentage points lower compared with the record high 6.9% IR a month ago, but 1.3 percentage points higher than the recorded 3.9% IR in the same period last year. The regional inflation rate was 0.8 percentage point lower than the 6.0% national average in November 2018.

All provinces registered lower inflation rates in November 2018 compared with their figures in the previous month, except Eastern Samar, which recorded a 0.1 percentage point increase in November 2018 (8.9%) from 8.8% in October 2018. It also posted the highest IR among the provinces. Biliran, meanwhile, registered the lowest IR at 2.6% during the reference month from 5.4% in October 2018, recording the largest decrease of 2.8 percentage points. The rest of the provinces registered decreases ranging from 0.6 to 2.3 percentage points.

Among the commodity groups, housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels registered the highest decrease of 4.4 percentage points. It was posted at 3.9% in November 2018 from 8.3% in October 2018. This can be attributed to the huge decrease in the index of electricity, gas and other fuels.

The transport index also registered a decrease of 1.9 percentage points in November 2018 (6.7%), from 8.6% in October 2018. Contributing to the decline was the slower annual gains seen in the index of operation of personal transport equipment.

The heavily weighted food and non-alcoholic beverages eased down to 7.4% in November 2018 from its previous month’s rate of 8.9%, a decrease of 1.5 percentage points. This can be traced to slower price increases of all food items, except for oils and fats and fruits, which registered faster IRs, and sugar, jam, honey, chocolate, and confectionery products; and food products not elsewhere classified, which retained their IRs at 6.7% and 5.4%, respectively.

Furnishings, household equipment and routine maintenance of the house increased to 3.6% during the reference month, 1.1 percentage points higher compared with the 2.5% IR in October 2018, due to the increase in the index for goods and services for routine household maintenance.

The Purchasing Power of Peso (PPP) of the region remained at P0.80 in November 2018. This PPP implies that goods and services worth P100 in November 2018 only costs P80 in 2012.

All provinces sustained their PPP from last month, except Leyte and Southern Leyte, which registered a 0.01 centavo increase each in PPP compared with their figures in October 2018. Leyte recorded the strongest PPP at P0.83. Biliran ranked second at P0.82, followed by Southern Leyte at P0.81 and Eastern Samar at P0.78. Northern Samar and Samar posted the weakest PPP at P0.75.