The headline inflation or overall inflation in Laguna decreased to 3.2 percent in August 2024 from 3.9 percent in July 2024. This brings the provincial average inflation from January to August 2024 to 2.7 percent. In August 2023, inflation rate was higher at 3.6 percent.
This downtrend inflation was primarily influenced by the slower annual increment of transport at 3.6 percent in August 2024 from 6.2 percent in the previous month. It was also influenced by the indices of food and non-alcoholic beverages and recreation, sport and culture with an annual drop of 3.6 percent and 2.0 percent during the month from their respective increases of 4.5 percent and 2.7 percent in July 2024.
On the contrary, higher inflation rates were noted in the indices of Clothing and footwear at 2.8 percent from 2.5 percent; Housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels at 3.2 percent from 3.0 percent; Furnishing, household equipment and routine household maintenance at 3.1 percent from 3.0 percent; Education services at 2.5 percent from -0.1 percent; and Personal care, and miscellaneous goods and services at 3.9 percent from 3.7 percent.
The rest of the commodity groups retained their previous month’s inflation rates.
The top three commodity groups contributing to the August 2024 overall inflation were Food and non-alcoholic beverages with 1.20 percentage points; Housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels with 0.64 percentage points; and Restaurants and accommodation services with 0.39 percentage points.
Food inflation shared 42.7 percent or 1.41 percentage points to the overall inflation in August 2024. The top three food groups in terms of contribution to the food inflation during the month were Cereals and cereal products with 3.62 percentage points; Meat and other parts of slaughtered land animals with 0.66 percentage points; and Vegetables, tubers, plantains, cooking bananas and pulses with 0.36 percentage points.
