BAGUIO CITY – The Cordillera office of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA-CAR) disclosed that the consumer price index (CPI) of the region in October last year was 129.1 which was 7.4 index points higher from the 127.7 CPI of October 2020 using 2012 as the base year.
CPI is the general measure of the change in the average retail prices of a market basket or collection of goods and services commonly purchased by the average Filipino household. Generally, the CPI increased reflecting the rise in the average prices of goods and services in all the 6 provinces of the Cordillera.
Among the Cordillera provinces, Kalinga posted the highest CPI in October 2021 with 135.3 followed by Apayao with 130.2 and Benguet with 129.9 while Abra posted the lowest CPI with 125.0.
On the other hand, among the commodity groups, alcoholic beverages and tobacco had the highest CPI in the region with 266.6 price index where Apayao incurred the highest CPI on the said commodity with 459.0 index points, followed by Abra, Kalinga and Ifugao with 368.9, 359.2 and 276.7 index points, respectively.
Further, clothing and footwear ranked second among the commodity groups in the region with 133.6 index points where Kalinga had the highest index on the said commodity with 143.2 while Apayao had the lowest with 127.2 index points.
The PSA-CAR added that food and non-alcoholic beverages registered the third highest CPI in the region with 132.6 index points where Benguet recorded the highest CPI on the said commodity with 136.7 index points followed by Kalinga and Mountain Province with 136.0 and 127.2 index points, respectively.
According to the PSA-Car, communication continues to incur the lowest CPI among the commodity groups in the region during the month of October 2021 with 103.1 index points where Kalinga incurred the highest index points on the said commodity with 105.1 index points while Mountain Province had the lowest with 98.0 index points.
By index point change, alcoholic barrages and tobacco reflected the highest increase with 20.2 index points and that increases were also reported on food and non-alcoholic beverages 11.5 index points, transport 7.2 index points and restaurants and miscellaneous goods and services 7.1 index points.
The PSA-CAR noted that the rest of the commodity groups reported minimal annual increase and that the average increase in the prices of goods and services in the region was pegged at 6.1 percent in October 2021 which is higher by 4.6 percentage points compared with the inflation of 1.5 percent in October 2020.
Benguet posted the highest inflation rate in October 2021 with 7.1 percent followed by Kalinga and Ifugao with 7.0 and 6.6 percent, respectively. Apayao recorded the lowest inflation among all the provinces with 2.4 percent.
Only Apayao reported lower inflation rate for October 2021 compared to October 2020 while all other provinces registered higher inflation rates compared to the same month the previous year
Inflation rate of the heavily weighted food and non-alcoholic beverages in September 2021 had the same rate in October 2021 with 9.5 percent price increase. Food and non-alcoholic beverages have the highest inflation rate among other commodities in the region with 9.5 percent in October 2021 followed by alcoholic beverages and tobacco with 8.2 percent and transport services with 6.9 percent.
Among the food items, corn recorded the highest CPI in the region with 199.4 index points followed by vegetables, fruits, and meat with 157.7, 156.0 and 153.5 index points, respectively.
By index points change, vegetables reported the highest with 40.6 followed by corn with 25.4 index points increase followed by meat with 25.3 index points hike.
Lastly, food products not elsewhere classified posted the lowest index points change with 0.6 points. By HENT