By Rjay Zuriaga Castor
For the fifth consecutive month, Western Visayas remained as the region with the highest inflation in the country despite the ease on the region’s inflation rate, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on May 5.
According to PSA, all regions outside NCR recorded slower inflation rates in April relative to their respective March 2023 annual growth rates.
Inflation in the Western Visayas slowed down further from 9.1 percent in March to 8.2 percent in April. A year ago or in April 2022, inflation was at 4.9 percent.
Nelida Amolar, PSA-6 officer-in-charge and chief statistical specialist, said the recent inflation numbers “was mainly due to the lower inflation in the index of food and non-alcoholic beverages at nine percent, from 10.3 percent in March 2023.”
A lower increment is also recorded in transportation from 7.9 percent to 5.7 percent.
Iloilo City logged the highest inflation rate in the region in April at 11.3 percent, which is 0.3 percent lower than March at 11.6 percent.
The island-province of Guimaras recorded the region’s lowest inflation rate in April at 4.8 percent.
Negros Occidental’s inflation rate last month was 8.8 percent, 8.7 percent in Bacolod City, eight percent in Iloilo province, 6.8 percent in Aklan, 6.4 percent in Capiz, and 6.2 percent in Antique.
Meanwhile, the country’s headline inflation also continuously decelerated from 7.6 percent in March to 6.6 percent in April.
