The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) sees rice inflation rising until July as inflation increased to 3.7 percent in March from 3.4 percent in February.

In a press conference Friday, PSA Undersecretary Claire Dennis Mapa noted that because of the base effect the price of rice is expected to continue to increase until July before it is expected to slightly go down by August.

"The expectation is it will increase strongly until July because of the base effect unless there is really some intervention that will happen to the market which may suddenly lower the price, but we haven't seen any as of now," he said.

"In August (rice prices ) may slightly decrease but still we will be experiencing it based on some computation to remain in double digit," he added.

Mapa said rice inflation has a big contributing factor to the overall inflation.

"The weight of rice in our commodity basket of all income households is 8.87 percent almost 9 percent. That is highest in terms of weight in our commodity basket. It is much higher than our bottom 30 percent income household, it reaches 17.9 percent... so when the price of rice increases it really has a high contribution (to the overall inflation)," he said.

Mapa added that the current inflation for rice which is 24.4 percent is getting closer to the highest rice inflation of 24.6 percent which was recorded last February 2009.

When asked if he expected rice inflation to exceed the 2009 record until July, Mapa said he will have to "see in the month of April".

Mapa said based on their monitoring, regular milled rice has an average price of 51.11 pesos per kilo for March 2024 and 39.90 in March 2023, with a year-on-year increase of 28.1 percent.

Last February 2024, the average price was at P50.44 with a month-on-month increase of 1.3 percent.

"For well milled rice the average price per kilo last March 2024 is at 56.44 pesos. Last March 2023, it was at 44. 23 so the year-on-year increase is around 27.6 percent. In February 2024, it was 55.93 so there was an increase of 0.9 percent for month-on-month," he said.

"For special rice, the average price last March 2024 is at 64.75 pesos. In March 2023 it was at 54 pesos and it has (a year-on-year) increase of 19.9 percent. In February 2024 it was 64.42 pesos so we have a month-on-month increase of about 0.5 percent," he added. Robina Asido/DMS