Macroeconomic Forecast Philippines

We expect the persistent food shortage and rebuilding efforts following the recent spate of typhoons which devastated parts of the Philippines -including Typhoon Ketsana which destroyed more than US$1.0bn worth of assets - to continue to have an inflationary impact on consumer prices. Indeed, consumer prices rose by 4.2% y-o-y in February 2010, a far cry from the 0.1% y-o-y increase registered in August 2009. In short, we are pencilling in a 5.5% rise in headline inflation by December 2010, bringing the average inflation rate for the whole year to 5.2%.

To read the full article, please choose one of the following options: