No cause for alarm about inflation

INFLATION reached 4.5 percent in April, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported on Friday. The increase in consumer prices accelerated from the 4.3 percent inflation rate recorded in March, and was significantly higher than the 3.2 percent inflation rate a year earlier. April’s inflation rate was in fact the highest in more than six years, since the 4.7 percent rate recorded in November 2011.

Those figures may be worrisome at first glance, and they certainly seem to confirm recent, largely anecdotal but widely publicized reports of growing negative consumer sentiment about higher prices. A closer look at the data, however, should ease concerns; the news is not as bad as it seems, and in some respects indicates some important positive developments.