Inflation rate in Southern Leyte
drops but food prices still high

Inflation rate in Southern Leyte dropped from 7.5 percent in January 2023 to 5.8 percent in February, according to the Philippines Statistics Authority (PSA) Eastern Visayas.
Eastern Visayas ranked the lowest inflation rate of 6.3 percent in February this year from 6.9 percent last January, 2023, as stated in the PSA report.
The decline was due to the lower inflation on the year-on-year growth rate in housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels group at 6.0 percent, from 8.4 in January. Transportation, restaurants and accommodation services, and alcoholic beverages and tobacco also helped the depletion.
However, inflation rate of food groups in record increased to 8.1 percent during the month of February compared to 7.6 percent in January this year. This was due to the higher cost of fish and other kinds of seafood, vegetables, other variants of banana (cooking banana), dry grains, milk, and other dairy products, fruits and nuts, rice and ready-made food and other food products.
Food groups with lower IRs in during this period were corn, meat and other parts of slaughtered land animals, oils and fats, and sugar, sweets, and other desserts.
Eastern Visayas’ inflation rate (IR) of 6.3 percent in February this year is still higher than last year’s IR of 5.0 percent.