Palace blames rising fuel prices for record-high 6.7% inflation

Malacañang is blaming increases in oil prices for the rise in the country’s inflation rate. /inquirer photo

While believing that it can still be solved, House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has called on President Rodrigo Duterte’s economic team to “move faster” on their implementation of policies to ease up the accelerating inflation.

Arroyo’s statement came after the rate of increase in prices of basic commodities rose to 6.7 percent in September as reported by the Philippine Statistics Authority on Friday.

“What I can say is that it happened to me before but then within a few months we were able to bring it down to 1.5 percent so it can be done,” Arroyo said in an interview on the sidelines of her inspection of a slope protection construction in Brgy. Maligaya, Floridablanca, Pampanga, on Friday.

“And my advice is for the economic team to move faster on implementation of their policies, which are more or less correct,” she added.

But the Pampanga 2nd District representative said she is also eyeing to propose an increase in the budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA) to ease up the effects of high inflation on the prices of food.

“…The inflation is most felt by the people in the price of food. As we were analyzing the budget, we realized that from 6 percent of the budget in my time, agriculture went down afterwards to 1.5 percent… There is really a correlation between what you do in the budget and what happens to the sector,” the former President explained.

Malacañang blamed the rising prices of fuel for the record-high 6.7 percent inflation recorded in September but assured the public that the government was undertaking measures to cushion the impact of rising prices in the country.

“Well, pagdating po sa paglobo ng inflation alam naman po natin na ang pinagmumulan niyan ay ‘yung pagtaas po ng presyo ng krudo. Tumaas na naman po ang presyo ng krudo,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a dzMM interview.