SINCE the coronavirus pandemic, Filipinos have seen their money yield fewer goods.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported early this month that headline inflation – the measure of overall national average inflation – eased to 2.3 in October 2024 from 4.9 percent in October 2023. But the latest figure was an increase from 1.9 percent in September 2024. PSA admitted that the upward trend in overall inflation was also affected by rising costs of food and non-alcoholic beverages such as transport, housing, water, electricity, gas and fuels.

Despite figures showing that inflation is cooling, Filipinos are still feeling the pain of rising prices. Let’s look and compare the prices of recognized food commodities between January 2022 and January 2024, based on the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) proposed retail prices. These include preserves, processed milk, coffee, bread and salt.

In canned sardines, there was an average increase of 8.08 percent, which means you will add P8 pesos to your P100 in today’s prices.

This also applies to condensed milk, at 8.02 percent.

You pay an average of 8.52 percent more for corned beef, while “patis” or fish sauce was 8.84 percent.

Soy sauce, which all Filipinos used as an ingredient, also increased to 8.83 percent.

The meatloaf jumped to 6.2 percent.

For coffee, it was only 4.76 percent.

Instant noodles, meanwhile, were at 4.88 percent.

Bread, however, registered a record increase of 39.17 percent.

Similarly, iodized rock salt swelled to 33.95 percent.

In the national aggregate, inflation appeared to be declining. Individual prices of basic goods benefiting poor families remain high.

The prices of these popular items take up roughly 45 to 50 percent of low-income households’ budgets. Any adverse increase in their prices has a serious impact on their purchasing power and quality of life. With the series of typhoons and conflicts, and the slowdown in the global economy, the average prices of this basket of goods will continue to rise unless we find better ways to tame the country’s inflation.