Philippine inflation reaches 7.8% as transport costs accelerate

Getting around became a bigger source of pressure on Philippine household budgets in October. Annual inflation reached 7.8%, up from 7.2% in September, in figures released on November 5. The Philippine Statistics Authority identified transport costs as the main driver of the acceleration, Reuters reported.

The reading was the highest since February 2023. It compares prices with October 2025: it does not mean they jumped 7.8% between September and October. As an illustration, a fixed basket costing ₱1,000 in October last year would cost ₱1,078 after a 7.8% increase. An individual family’s purchases can follow a different path.

The category figures show why a single national average cannot describe every part of the weekly budget. Combining Reuters’s headline figures with Philstar’s category breakdown gives this comparison:

Changes in the last column are calculated by subtraction. Each month’s annual rate compares with the same month a year earlier. Food here means food alone, not the broader food-and-nonalcoholic-beverages category.

Philstar attributed the faster rise in the housing, water, electricity and gas category to higher fuel prices.

Transport’s increase stands out. But the category whose inflation speeds up most need not contribute the most to the overall inflation rate. These are different questions: how quickly a category’s prices are rising, and how much that category adds to the cost of the whole basket.

A compact budget example makes the distinction visible. Suppose someone spent ₱100 on transport and ₱500 on food a year earlier. For unchanged quantities, applying October’s reported annual rates gives:

• Transport: ₱100 × 20.1% = ₱20.10 extra.
• Food: ₱500 × 6.4% = ₱32 extra.

Food adds more pesos in this example despite its slower price rise, because the starting expenditure is larger. These are hypothetical spending amounts, not official PSA weights or estimates of the categories’ contributions to national inflation. The table’s 5.5-point transport acceleration likewise cannot be read as a 5.5-point contribution to the headline rate.

The food figures contain another distinction that matters at the checkout. Slower annual increases for fish and vegetables helped food inflation ease, Philstar reported. That means a slower rise compared with a year earlier; it does not establish that October groceries were cheaper than September’s. Rice inflation actually increased to 20.7%, from 20.3%, while the overall food rate slowed. A household buying a larger share of rice could therefore experience a different increase from the food average.

Reuters also reported core inflation of 5.4%, a measure excluding volatile food and energy items. Prices in that remaining basket were higher than a year earlier too; the figure is an average, rather than a uniform increase on every purchase.

Sources: Both reports describe the same PSA statistical release, rather than independent measurements.

• Reuters, via The Business Times: October headline and core inflation.
• Philstar: transport, housing and food details.