Inflation during April declined for the third straight month at 6.6 percent, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said Friday.

In a press conference, PSA chief Dennis Mapa said inflation rate continued its downward trend from 8.7 percent in January to 8.6 percent in February, bringing the year-to-date average to 7.9 percent.

This is slightly above the recently revised inflation target of 5 to 7 percent by the Development Budget Coordinating Committee (DBCC).

The April figures, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, ''is within the BSP’s forecast range of 6.3 to 7.1 percent, consistent with the overall assessment that inflation will remain elevated over the near term before gradually decelerating back to target range towards end-2023.''

The heavily-weighted food and non-alcoholic beverages index helped pull down inflation with 7.9 percent from 9.3 percent in March.

"The main reason for the slowdown of inflation in April 2023 versus March 2023 was the slower movement in the prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages," said Mapa.

Lower transport inflation at 2.6 percent along with the housing, water, gas, electricity and other fuels brought down the overall data with an inflation of 6.5 percent.Mapa said the inflation rate for sugar as gleaned from the confectionery and dessert sub-index decreased to 33.7 percent in April from 35.2 percent in March.

He said inflation rate for sugar items has slightly decreased from 67.8 percent in March to 62.9 percent in April. Mapa added that sugar inflation is still high.

Mapa said the inflation rate in rice continued to increase in the past three months.

"The rice inflation, we know that it has the highest weight in our inflation basket and it increased in the past three months... although the incremental increase is not that high," he said.

"In April it is at 2.9 percent, compared to March at 2.6 percent, and February at 2.2 percent. So between March and April, it has an incremental increase of about .3 percent. In the area of the National Capital Region, the inflation for rice is at 1.2 percent in April versus 1.0 percent in March and 0.5 percent in February," he added.

Mapa said rice inflation outside Metro Manila is also higher at 3.2 percent in April, at 2.8 percent in March, and at 2.1 percent in February.

He also mentioned that the expected occurrence of the El Nino phenomenon may also affect rice inflation in the coming months.

"The threat of El Nino will have a possible effect and the Department of Agriculture admitted its possible effect on our production level," he added. DMS