Arroyo wants Duterte economic team to ‘move faster’ to arrest rising inflation

Photo from the Office of the Speaker

While believing that it can still be solved, House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has called on President Rodrigo Duterte’s economic team to “move faster” on their implementation of policies to ease up the accelerating inflation.

Arroyo’s statement came after the rate of increase in prices of basic commodities rose to 6.7 percent in September as reported by the Philippine Statistics Authority on Friday.

READ: Inflation hits new over 9-year high of 6.7% in September on elevated food prices

“What I can say is that it happened to me before but then within a few months we were able to bring it down to 1.5 percent so it can be done,” Arroyo said in an interview on the sidelines of her inspection of a slope protection construction in Brgy. Maligaya, Floridablanca, Pampanga on Friday.

“And my advice is for the economic team to move faster on implementation of their policies, which are more or less correct,” she added.

But the Pampanga 2nd District representative said she is also eyeing to propose an increase in the budget of the Department of Agriculture (DA) to ease up the effects of high inflation on the prices of food.

“…The inflation is most felt by the people in the price of food. As we were analyzing the budget, we realized that from 6 percent of the budget in my time, agriculture went down afterwards to 1.5 percent… There is really a correlation between what you do in the budget and what happens to the sector,” the former President explained.

“I’m trying to see whether we can increase the budget of the DA this time to P20B which is a very, very tall order but that’s what I am trying to tell the committee that’s doing the amendments,” she added.

Arroyo, a Duterte ally, earlier expressed confidence that the Duterte administration could solve the record-high 6.4 percent inflation in August. /kga

READ: Arroyo on 6.4% inflation: I’ve had a more alarming situation as President