Article by Andrew Joshua Ortile Graphics by John Joshua Cruz
September 6, 2022
Inflation is something inevitable and occurs with the passage of time. Prices increase and decrease depending on the economy of one country and the current status quo, but for this instance, as I would like to say, the stars have aligned and put us in this situation where gas and sugar prices are both sky high, and different industries are experiencing difficulties. A food shortage may be imminent as gas and sugar are included in a lot of daily commodities, such as sugar for biscuits, bread, and gas for transportation of goods from farms to markets or international freight. At the time of making the article, the Philippine peso versus the United States dollar has constantly been low signifying the lowering of the Philippine peso value in general, therefore making imports both local and international inflate in prices as the cost of their transit is expensive.
We must be aware that a lot of goods such as sugar would get influenced easily as gas would be affecting the prices from the statement given earlier. The government should limit the costs and seek solutions where the Philippines could sustain essential commodities and rely less on imported goods, and once We reach self-sufficiency, we can have control over the prices of commodities.
In the end, the ones that would feel the price increase and food shortage would be the working class, as the price increases may be small but would pile up. Let us say you would like a simple one bottle of cola a day, which in the past only cost around 10 pesos. Due to the increase in price,the original price of 10 pesos has increased to 12 pesos. Rather than spending 100 pesos on 1 cola a day for ten days, you would be paying 20 pesos more in total due to the price increase. Some may say that a 20-peso increase in the weekly soda cost is nothing but spare change. But if you look at it from a different perspective, soda isn't the only thing that a Filipino would need to survive. We would need daily commodities such as canned goods, food, bread, and more. Those different items stacked up would pose a challenge for our minimum wage earners and other working-class Filipinos.
With the article concluding, we would like to ask you, the reader – a food for thought, do you think that the prices or inflation situation would continue to rapidly increase in the following months or would it slow down in the next few quarters of the year? Would the economy be able to recover?
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