By: Margaret Padilla
According to Albay Representative and former economist, Joey Salceda, global economic developments point to a government with high inflation. As a result, legislators in the incoming 19th Congress are preparing to tackle problems like high inflation even before presumptive President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. takes office on June 30.
“Commodities will have high prices over this decade,” he anticipated. “That’s going to be a global trend,”
The average inflation over the next decade will be closer to 5% or higher per year. Hence, “it’s still going to hurt because [our] average inflation over the last ten years has been just under 3%,” he explained.
However, Salceda also mentioned that the Philippines performed “much better than much of the rest of the world,” where global inflation was 9.2 percent in the last quarter and the Philippine rate was only 4 percent.
“The only way to balance that is to increase our commodity output so that our farmers and domestic commodity sector benefit from high prices,” the lawmaker suggested.
He believes that increasing current agricultural and mining output while also producing new output from oil and gas resources will be vital for both the next administration and the one that follows.
Meanwhile, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Juan Edgardo Angara agreed that many people are skeptical about the country’s ability to recover. “There is a great deal of uncertainty,” he explained. “There’s a lot of doom and gloom.”
He knew that even economists are doubtful. Former economic planning chief Ernesto Pernia, for example, predicted that a Marcos victory in the last election would be detrimental to the economy.
Angara, on the other hand, was more optimistic, assuring “the Philippines will be okay and there’s a chance that we might even be better.” He said that the growth of the economy over the last three administrations indicates this.