CLAIM: Philippines has one of the lowest inflation rates in the world
RATING: LACKS CONTEXT
THE FACTS: Albay Representative Joey Salceda at the end of February stated that due to strategic decisions made by the country’s economic managers, the Philippines’ inflation rate is “still one of the lowest in the world.”
It is hard to argue against Salceda. After all, before he joined politics, he was among the top fund managers in the country.
Salceda said that the average inflation rate is 8.5% while the country is sitting at 5.8% only. But this could be a case of cherry-picking.
The figure quoted by Salceda was from statista.com where the 8.75 percent in 2022 was an outlier.
To quote the report: “Despite the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the global inflation rate fell to 3.23 percent in the pandemic’s first year, before rising to 4.7 percent in 2021. This increase came as the impact of supply chain delays began to take more of an effect on consumer prices, before the Russia-Ukraine war exacerbated this further. A series of compounding issues such as rising energy and food prices, fiscal instability in the wake of the pandemic, and consumer insecurity have created a new global recession, and global inflation in 2022 is estimated to have reached 8.75 percent. This is the highest annual increase in inflation since 1996.”
However, if we were to look at the statistics provided by the World Bank Global database of inflation and the International Monetary Fund, the Philippines places 6th in the highest recorded inflation rate in Southeast Asia.
The WB report showed the world inflation rate at only 3.5 percent in 2021.
In this report, the inflation rate in the Philippines in 2021 was 3.9. It only started increasing last year and this year.
Furthermore, the Philippines’ inflation rate at present, according to most sources, is at its 14th year high.
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