Consumer Price Index

• Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the general measure of the change in the average retail prices of a market basket or collection of goods and services commonly purchased by the average Filipino household.

• The Philippine Statistics Authority has rebased the CPI for all income households from 2012 to 2018 based year. The rebasing was done to ensure that the CPI market basket to capture goods and services commonly purchased by households, to update expenditure patterns of households and to synchronize its base year with 2018 base year of the Gross Regional Domestic Product and other indices produced by PSA.

• The CPI of the Province of Benguet in February 2022 was 113.2

Figure 1. Consumer Price Index, Benguet: February 2022 (2018=100)

Figure 2. Consumer Price Index by Commodity Group Benguet: February 2022 (2018=100)

CPI by Commodity Groups

• Among the commodity groups, Financial Services still had the highest CPI at 146.0 index points.

• Transport ranked second among the commodity groups in the province at 125.6 index points.

• Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco registered the third highest CPI at 119.9 index points.

• Meanwhile, Information and Communication still incurred the lowest CPI among the commodity groups at the provincial level with 103.2 index points.

• CPI of All Items in Benguet increased by 0.2 index points from last month.

Figure 3. Year-on-Year Consumer Price Index by Commodity Group, Benguet: February 2021 and February 2022 (2018=100)

• Comparing from the previous year, CPI on all commodities for the year 2022 increased except for Education Services. Education Services decreased by 0.70 index points consistently. Inflation Rate Inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. A chief measure of price inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in CPI over time.

• The inflation rate of Benguet for February 2022 was still at 7.2%.

• Financial Services still posted the highest inflation rate among the commodity groups at 46%. It was followed by Transport at 26.49% and Restaurant and Accommodation Services at 9.02% inflation rate.

• Meanwhile, only Education Services had recorded deflation among the commodity groups. Prices for the said group deflated by 0.66%.

Figure 4. Inflation Rates by Commodity Groups, Benguet: February 2022 (2018=100)

Purchasing Power of the Peso (PPP)

Purchasing Power of Peso is a measure of the real value of peso in a given period relative to the base year. The nearer the base year to the current period, the higher the value of the peso derived. As the period goes farther from the base year, the value of peso diminishes as this is “eaten up” by the inflationary factors.

• The value of 1 peso in the province was 88 centavos in February 2022. It dropped by seven centavos from the 0.95 centavos in February 2021. This can be translated that one peso in 2018 was worth 88 centavos in February 2022.

Figure 5. Worth of a Peso, Benguet: February 2021 and February 2022 (2018=₱100)