President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. couldn’t believe that the inflation rate shot up to 6.1% in June as reported by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The PSA attributed the spike in inflation rate to the increase in prices of food items, particularly chicken and rice.
“I think I will have to disagree with that number. We are not that high,” Marcos told reporters Tuesday (July 5). Our targets were less… 4% or less.”
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas wants full-year inflation within 2-4%, but has conceded that rising global oil prices and short supply of some food items have pushed the cost of basic goods higher.
Marcos tried to recover by linking inflation and interest rate pressures to the foreign exchange rate, with the peso now at P55 to a dollar.
“We are not looking specifically to the exchange rates now… what we are targeting is the inflation rate. So that’s what we are doing,” he said about monetary policy.
He then pinned the blame elsewhere: “Much of our inflation is actually imported inflation. It is imported because it is the inflation on the products that have suffered inflation that we import. So sumama na ‘yung inflation nila doon sa atin.”