President Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr. on Tuesday said he expects that the country's "unfortunate" inflation rate would ease by the second quarter of 2023.
In a video message, Marcos said the inflation rate would slowly drop as the prices of fuel and agriculture products are also slowly going down.
"As I said, the importation of many agri products which have been a large part of the inflation rate.... We have already take some measures. So that the supply will be greater and so that will bring the prices down but that will take some little time," he said.
"And my continuing estimate or forecast is that we can see the lowering of the inflation rates by the second quarter of this year," the President added.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. said Tuesday he expects to see the inflation rate going down with the drop in the prices of fuel prices and imported agricultural products despite the inflation increasing further at 8.7 percent in January 2023.
— Presidential Communications Office (@pcogovph) February 7, 2023
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But while the government's interventions to ease inflation have "not yet gone through the system", Marcos said he believes that inflation is "going to be as high as it's going to get."
The country's headline inflation hit 8.7 percent in January 2023, this is higher than the 8.1 percent recorded in December 2022.
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the January 2023 inflation rate is the fastest pace since November 2008.
