By Marisol Bo-oc | 03:25 PM January 09, 2023
The provinces of Bohol and Cebu still had the highest inflation in Central Visayas, reports from Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA)-7 showed.
Inflation means a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money. It involves goods and services becoming more expensive over a certain period of time.
Meanwhile, inflation in Central Visayas accelerated to 8.5 percent in December 2022, from 8.3 percent in November 2022.
This is the highest reported regional inflation since October 2008. In December 2021, the inflation rate in the region stood at 2.2 percent
With this month’s inflation, the region’s average inflation from January to December 2022 stood at 6.6 percent.
The acceleration of the regional inflation in December 2022 was mainly due to the higher year-on-year growth rates in the indices of Food and Non-alcoholic Beverages which retained its previous month’s inflation rate at 11.2 percent, housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels at 9.7 percent, from 8.7 percent in November 2022 and restaurants and accommodation services with an inflation rate of 6.9 percent in December 2022, from 6.8 percent inflation in the previous month.
Compared with the respective previous month’s annual rates of the provinces and Highly Urbanized Cities (HUCs) of Central Visayas, Cebu province and the City of Cebu exhibited lower inflation in December 2022.
Among the provinces, Negros Oriental posted the lowest inflation rate during the month at 7.9 percent while Bohol and Cebu had the highest inflation rate at 10.4 percent.
Moreover, among the HUCs in Central Visayas, the City of Mandaue retained its previous month’s annual rate posting the lowest inflation rate at 4.4 percent, followed by the City of Cebu at 5.1 percent. The highest inflation rate was noted in the City of Lapu-Lapu at 6.0 percent.
