Despite the slight slowdown in the country’s inflation rate, House Senior Deputy Minority Leader and Northern Samar 1st District Rep. Paul Daza warned the public against expecting prices of commodities to also decrease.

He said that the inflation figure of 6.3 percent this August compared to July’s 6.4 percent released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) should be put in the proper context.

“On social media, there appears to be this widespread notion that there will soon be a reduction in the price of goods, and that marketing and grocery bills will now be lessened,” Daza noted.

“We should temper our expectations, though, because a comparatively lower inflation rate does not necessarily mean that consumer prices will also decrease,” he added.

The lawmaker stated this amid public complaints about the astronomical prices of fuel, commodities, and everyday grocery items, emphasizing that the public instead should not take the lower figure at face value and to better understand its implications.

August’s 6.3 percent Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the first slowdown of the country’s inflation figure in six months.

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Daza explained that inflation measures the rate of change in price levels, which means that a lower inflation rate simply indicates that prices are not rising as quickly as they were compared to the previous period.

“That’s often the tricky thing about measuring rates. In this case, it doesn’t mean that the overall trajectory has been reversed, it simply means that prices as a whole are increasing more slowly, and hopefully they will level off eventually. But that can take quite some time,” he stressed.

Albay 2nd District Rep. Joey Salceda, chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, said that the country should shift its worries from fuel to food inflation.

“Some surprises could still take place in the world market for oil, but generally, I see that we should be focusing on food price inflation now. The effects of fuel price hikes on food inflation will dissipate much later than fuel prices will begin to decline (fertilizers, machines, and other inputs will have been made with much higher fuel prices),” he explained in a separate statement.

He lauded the slowdown of inflation by August as a “positive development” since he had expected inflation to peak and start decreasing by November.

Noting how food prices are “especially crucial for our learning recovery,” the veteran lawmaker and economist highlighted the empirical link between high food prices and low academic performance.

“If we want to accelerate our catch-up from learning losses due to Covid-19, we need cheaper food soon,” Salceda said.

PSA’s report of the 6.3 percent rate was within the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) projected range of 5.9 percent to 6.7 percent for August.

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The BSP had said in a statement that it is “prepared to take further policy actions to bring inflation toward a target-consistent path over the medium term” although noting the “upside risks” that continue to impact the inflation outlook.

“The BSP has already raised interest rates by 175 basis points this year, so I think they are doing their best to keep inflation within an optimal range that promotes growth, without substantially reducing the purchasing power of the peso,” Daza noted.

“The priority now is to really look at other supply side policies, as well as finding functional ways to provide aid and assistance to our countrymen who are most saddled by the cost of goods,” he added.