August 6th, 2024
Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda
House Ways and Means Chair Joey Sarte Salceda (Albay, 2nd district) released the following statement on the July 2024 inflation report.
It’s no longer rice, rice, rice. It’s corn.
The problem with rice has mostly abated. While rice prices remain elevated year-on-year, month-on-month, prices are actually declining slightly. I expect this trend to continue as more stocks arrive from India and Vietnam.
There is an emerging food issue to deal with: Corn. There is momentum in the corn price. Secretary Tiu-Laurel already mentioned that the DA is monitoring the situation as early as April, and I believe efforts are underway to address the issue. At 5.8 percent month-on-month inflation, corn prices are a cause for attention.
The problem with corn is that while global trading prices are generally lower year-on-year, our domestic livestock, poultry, and dairy sector cannot rely on imported corn. Imported corn significantly diminishes in nutritive quality when shipped. Of course, prices pressures could ease with upholding the minimum access volume system for corn, but that’s no structural solution.
As a result, I’ve been seeing some increase in the price of poultry, but based on our monitoring of the situation, the price situation in that sector should ease by the time the August report is released – prices are down in August by as much as 12% from their July peak.
I will be having a series of conversations with Secretary Tiu-Laurel on the corn and the broader livestock situation around the third week of August. We will be discussing the Livestock, Poultry, Dairy, and Corn Development Acts, which I principally authored in the House.
Other than corn, the only other real issue is with electricity prices – but that’s a seasonal matter that I expect to moderate by the next few months.
No appetite in the BSP for policy rate adjustments just yet. But because most of our inflation woes are now single-issue matters, there is some cause for cautious optimism.