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| The inflation rate in Eastern Visayas decelerated to 6.3% in February 2023, lower than the national average, driven by lower inflation in certain commodity groups. Photo: PSA |
EASTERN VISAYAS – The latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority shows that the inflation rate (IR) in Eastern Visayas continued to slow down in February 2023, dropping to 6.3 percent from 6.9 percent in January 2023. However, it's worth noting that the current IR is still higher than the 5.0 percent IR recorded in February 2022.
Despite this, Eastern Visayas had a lower regional IR than the national average of 8.6 percent in February 2023.
The lower inflation rate in the Housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels category, which dropped from 8.4 percent in January 2023 to 6.0 percent, helped bring down the overall IR for the region.
Other categories that also contributed to the decline in the regional IR were Transport (5.0%), Restaurants and accommodation services (7.0%), and Alcoholic beverages and tobacco (7.5%).
However, some categories experienced an increase in IR during February. These include Food and non-alcoholic beverages (7.8%), Clothing and footwear (2.4%), Furnishings, household equipment, and routine household maintenance (3.9%), Health (2.4%), Information and communication (1.2%), Recreation, sport, and culture (2.1%), and Personal care, and miscellaneous goods and services (4.2%).
Overall, the rest of the commodity groups retained their previous month’s IRs or had no growth.
The food index had a faster growth rate of 8.1 percent during the month, up from 7.6 percent in January 2023. This increase in food inflation was primarily due to the higher IR of Fish and other seafood, which went up to 5.4 percent in February 2023 from 1.7 percent in January 2023. The double-digit IR of Vegetables, tubers, cooking bananas, and pulses at 24.8 percent in February 2023 also contributed to the rise in food inflation.
Among the regions, Eastern Visayas had the lowest IR at 6.3 percent during the month of February. Western Visayas had the highest IR at 10.8 percent, followed by Zamboanga Peninsula and Davao Region at 9.9 percent. SOCCSKSARGEN, the only region that retained its IR of 7.4 percent.
In terms of provinces, Eastern Samar had the highest IR in the region at 10.3 percent, while Biliran had the lowest IR at 2.1 percent. Tacloban City, the lone Highly Urbanized City (HUC) in the region, had an IR of 4.3 percent in February 2023, higher than the 3.7 percent IR recorded in the previous month. —iTacloban (Source: PSA)