While House Deputy Minority Leader and ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro on Tuesday, Dec. 6, urged President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to prioritize salary increase amid the 14-year-high inflation rate of 8 percent in November 2022, House Ways and Means chair and Albay 2nd District Rep. Joey Salceda offered solutions, such as sugar trade liberalization and farmer support and training.
The Philippines’ inflation rate jumped to a whopping 8 percent last month, the highest recorded in 14 years or since Nov. 2008, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported, because of the rising prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages.
This figure is more than double the recorded 3.7 percent inflation rate in November 2021 and a small increase from the 7.7 percent inflation rate recorded in October 2022.
In a statement, Castro said the Marcos administration cannot turn a blind eye to the reality that millions of Filipinos are going hungry because of rising prices, and called it out for having enough “surplus of funds” for the controversial P275-billion Maharlika Wealth Fund (MWF), the NTF-ELCAC (National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict), and the confidential funds approved for both the Office of the President (OP) and the Office of the Vice President (OVP).
“In the spirit of the upcoming holidays, the Marcos administration should ensure that (the) people are able to provide decent lives for themselves and their families. With the record-high inflation rate of 8 percent this November, the Marcos Jr. administration cannot deny the fact that this has a huge impact on the everyday lives of ordinary Filipinos,” she said.
“We urge the Marcos Jr. administration to certify wage and salary bills in Congress as urgent. It should make concrete steps that will immediately affect the people. The government must do something to immediately relieve the people of the heavy burden of the effects of high inflation and the below living wages they receive,” the lawmaker added.
Castro stressed that the administration should prioritize lowering the prices of basic commodities and increasing the wages of Filipinos instead of focusing on the MWF.
In a separate statement, Salceda expressed no surprise that the country reached 8 percent inflation rate because he warned in August that inflation could even peak at 8.5 percent with the country ending with an annual average of 6 percent.
READ: Inflation soars to 14-year high at 8% in Nov.
“We are on track to meet that number,” he said.
But while he was not surprised of the record-high number, the veteran lawmaker and economist listed suggestions to President Marcos and his economic team.
“There is an abundance of tools available to the President and his economic team to combat inflation. Immediate executive action may still take time to actually address fundamental drivers of inflation, but would be proper signaling for the public and private sectors. Inflation remains the toughest economic storm we must weather, and our ships must sail in the same direction,” he stated.
First, Salceda said that the country should “open up our food markets” because the “rigid food trade regime in crops in short supply” is also the reason food prices became the “primary driver of high inflation.”
He hit the strategy of “stubborn protectionism” of the sugar sector because it stunts the growth of the food industry, “and forces us to import more sugar-heavy finished goods.”
“We need to reconsider ways to protect our farmers in ways other than strict protectionism in our agricultural trade regime. The 38 percent year-on-year inflation in sugar can no longer be justified by protecting the local sector, which is heavily unequal on its own.”
“As such, some form of sugar trade liberalization must remain on the policy table,” he said, adding that increasing the Minimum Access Volume for corn immediately would help the domestic supply.
Climate change and pestilence are also primary drivers of inflation because farmers are unable to address these threats.
Salceda called for a “more robust and active Agricultural Training Institute, and DA (Department of Agriculture) Regional Field Offices, as well as better Municipal Agriculturist Offices will be crucial.”
He also recommended that the President issue an executive order to ease all supply bottlenecks for food and other farm producers as this will address the role of logistics and transport costs in increasing food prices.
The order should direct local government units (LGUs) to lift all hindrances and blockages across farm-to-market routes and the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to ensure the proper flow of traffic feeding into inter-island nautical routes.