Solon: Rice remains primary driver of soaring prices of goods, services

Rice remains the primary driver of the soaring prices of goods and services, notwithstanding a slight drop in its cost in April to 23.9 percent, economist and lawmaker Joey Salceda said Tuesday.

April headline inflation went up for the third straight month at 3.8 percent month, triggered mainly by food and higher prices of petroleum products.

Data from the Philippine Statistic Authority (PSA) showed that the price of rice decelerated to 23.9 percent from the 24.4 percent rate in March.

However, Salceda, the chairperson of the House Committee on Ways and Means, said the statistics are still significantly high, making rice still a dominant driver to the upward trend of food inflation, which shared 57.9 percent of the overall inflation in April.

"The inflation rates of all major commodities are in the single digits, except rice, and rice alone," said the Albay solon.

While the prices of goods and services jumped to 3.8 percent in April from 3.7 percent in March, the figure, however, remained within the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas' (BSP) target range of 2 to 4 percent.

Salceda, however, lamented that this failed to address the underlying causes of the rice crisis as well as the poor's access to affordable rice.

"The management of this rate -- within our inflation targets, but still painful for the poorest households -- must be centered primarily on rice," Salceda said.

Salceda has been calling on the economic managers to laser-focus their game plan on the staple grain to combat inflation.

Failure to do so, he said, will still make rice a major factor influencing the overall inflation in the coming months.

The uptrend in April inflation was primarily attributed to the acceleration in the prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages, which surged 6.3 percent from 5.6 in March.

The increase in the cost of vegetables (-2.5% to 4.3%) and fish (-0.9% to 0.4%) were also factors in the overall inflation rate last month.

"While corn prices are still decelerating year on year, I have observed an acceleration of poultry prices which will likely reflect on May figures when they come. Corn inflation will likely be positive next month. This is something to watch out for," Salceda said.

The amendments to Republic Act No. 11203 or Rice Tariffication Law, which already hurdled a House panel on Tuesday in compliance with President Marcos' request to pass it as urgent, will improve the way the country manages the massive P29 billion tariff revenues from rice imports to help local farmers and consumers, according to Salceda.

The modifications to the five-year-old RTL, including allowing the National Food Authority (NFA) to sell rice again in the market, are seen as the long-awaited solution to curb the skyrocketing rice price, currently pegged at P55.12 and P49.44 for local premium and well-milled, respectively.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) earlier announced that the price of rice would remain high until July owing to the impact on the agriculture sector of El Niño, which is expected to persist until May.