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MANILA, Philippines – Notable efforts on three key issues — inflation, economic growth and employment — have been cited as reasons for the three-point improvement of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s approval ratings
MANILA, Philippines — Seven out of ten Filipinos disapproved of the government's response to rising costs of essential goods and services, according to a recent Pulse Asia survey.
MANILA, Philippines — The approval and trust ratings of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte remained mostly unchanged despite a majority of Filipinos disapproving of the way the government controls the rising prices of goods, according to a new poll.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) [link] reported that December inflation cooled to 3.9% y/y. While this monthly result is within the government’s target range of 2% to 4%, the average inflation for the full year was significantly outside of that target band at 6%. The PSA said that the lower inflation rate in December was driven by slower price increases in housing and essential utilities like water, fuel, and power. According to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), the increase in the price of rice was still the “most significant contributor” to the December inflation result. NEDA said that additional short-term relief measures will be considered to complement its medium-term goal of boosting agricultural productivity.MB BOTTOM-LINE: The giddy calls for a Q1 US Federal Reserve pivot from tightening (raising rates) to loosening (cutting rates) have given way to the post-New Year’s hangover reality that rates there are likely to remain level for some time before coming back down, and I hear a similar hesitancy from the BSP and our country’s economic managers to take their knee off of inflation’s neck too quickly. That said, the BSP’s Governor, Eli Remolona, said that it had been “intervening a bit too much” in the foreign exchange markets to support the Philippine Peso’s value relative to the US Dollar, and signaled that the BSP would move toward a “less managed” framework for foreign exchange interventions. Mr. Remolona had previously committed to defending the ?57:$1 “psychological” line, but now appears open to allowing the exchange rate to drift a bit further afield. It’s worth watching for companies that still carry a heavy amount of debt denominated in US Dollars.
There are no scheduled PSE events this week, but it is the first full trading week of the year and we have the December inflation data in, so hopefully traders and investors will get a good look at the market this week. There are also no major scheduled events in the US markets, so it’s shaping up to be pretty quiet.MB BOTTOM-LINE: For any long-term investors out there, it’s a great time to review your thesis and your portfolio, and plan out any adjustments that you might need to make. My theme for FY23 was “Defense”, but I think my theme for FY24 is going to be “Preparation”; there’s a huge amount of uncertainty in the market right now, and I think that turning a profit this year will hinge on how quickly I’m able to convert event-based price drops into buying opportunities. These types of opportunistic trades were by far the most profitable for me in FY23, but they required me to be almost hyper-focused on a small number of stocks. I’m going to maintain that effort this year, or at least until it feels like the market has more of a direction.
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is looking to start issuing its decision on requests for price adjustments of basic necessities and prime commodities (BNPC) this January.
INFLATION's return to target last month lifted share prices but not the peso on Friday.
