Albay 2nd district Rep. Joey Salceda would rather look a the bright side amid the Philippines' rather depressing 8.1 percent inflation rate for December 2022, which pushes the whole year average to 5.8 percent.
“There is good reason to believe that oil, transport, and energy prices will be cheaper, or at least not inflate as quickly as they did in 2021 and 2022," Salceda claimed in a statement Thursday, Jan. 5, the same day that the inflation figures were released.
According to the economist-solon, there are signs pointing to an oil supply surplus in the first quarter of 2023, "as demand slows down and the US (United States) and other non-OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) countries try to undercut the global cartel".
"The world seems to have already adapted partly to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with Europe being able to fill their reserves without Russian piped gas. So, oil and energy prices could stabilize," Salceda further observed.
It is widely known that world oil price movements have a domino effect on prices of basic commodities, particularly food.
His optimism notwithstanding, the House Committee on Ways and Means chairman said if the year 2022 proved anything, it's that "The country’s food price issues are structural.”
Salceda pointed out that food inflation remained the biggest contributor to December 2022 inflation, at 10.2 percent. He called it “extremely alarming".
“And the highest price indices among commodities under food are vegetables at 32.4 percent and sugar at 38.8 percent, which we produce at a structural deficit but which are also very prone to smuggling.
“In other words, you have smugglers who are not only not paying their fair share of taxes and duties; they are also profiting from high domestic prices," he said.
CHECK THIS OUT TOO:
https://mb.com.ph/2023/01/05/guanzon-has-fun-with-onion-memes/
Salceda said the country’s “predicament with onion prices” shows broader systemic issues with the country’s food trade and production system.
“We now have the world’s most expensive domestic onion prices. We have some of the world’s most expensive domestic sugar prices. Why don’t we just allow legal importation, at least among industrial or large-scale users like restaurant chains for onions and food manufacturers for sugar? These prices are obvious bubbles that we can burst," he said.