House eyes specl powers vs inflation for PBBM By Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz @joveemarie
A THE WORLD ›› A11
FROM CALIFORNIA TO NY, STORMS RAVAGE US FROM COAST-TO-COAST
S skyrocketing food prices can result in 2.58 million more poor Filipinos, economist-lawmakers are considering the grant of special powers to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in order to curtail inflation. Speaker Martin Romualdez, House Committee on Ways and Mea ns C ha ir ma n Joey Sa r te Salceda and House Committee
on Appropriations Senior Vice Chairperson Stella Luz Quimbo said the lower chamber is working with the President’s economic team to control the increase in consumer prices. Lawmakers said this following a briefing given by members of the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) on the impact of inflation on national government programs, activities and projects. “I stand by my bill granting
special powers for the President to curtail inflation. This has long been my call—and it is especially more urgent now that the causes of inflation are more evidently structural,” said Salceda.
Monetary tools exhausted
“THE economic managers themselves have stated that we have more or less exhausted what monetary policy can do to reduce prices. The causes are now mostly structural—so the solutions should also
be,” he added. Salceda earlier filed the proposed Bayan Bangon Muli package that integrates a significant number of special powers to curtail price increases—short of price controls, which would of course be more harmful than do any good for supply stability. Salceda proposed to include in the Bayan Bangon Muli package the anti-hoarding powers, powers See “Special,” A2
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Wednesday, March 1, 2023 Vol. 18 No. 137
P25.00 nationwide | 2 sections 22 pages | 7 DAYS A WEEK
BSP sees Feb inflation above 9% By Cai U. Ordinario
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SSG to stay on imported coffee–PHL to Jakarta
@caiordinario
IGHER prices of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and food may have driven inflation to breach 9 percent in February, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
In its month-ahead inflation forecast, BSP said inflation in February may fall within the range of 8.5 to 9.3 percent. LPG and food items, such as pork, fish, egg, and sugar would be the main driver of inflation. In a hearing at the House of Representatives (HOR) on Tuesday, BSP Governor Felipe M. Medalla said price pressures are broadening as 196 items of the over 300 items being monitored to compute inflation have already registered price increases of above 4 percent. “[Some] 123 of those [items] are food and beverages, so quite a bit. [Another is that] 66 of those are not, meaning inflation is beginning to
spread to the rest of the economy. To put it bluntly, higher prices beget higher prices,” Medalla said in his speech in Congress on Tuesday. Medalla said given what is happening to the economy, it is possible for inflation to remain elevated for 19 to 20 months, starting April of 2022. Based on this, the 19th or 20th month would mean inflation is expected to remain elevated until May or June this year. Medalla earlier said inflation will slow to below 4 percent in the last quarter of the year. See “BSP,” A2
By Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas @jearcalas
T
TRAVEL TAX ONLINE From left is Roy Martin, Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (Tieza) Director, Board for Tourism Estate Development & Management Services; Mark Lapid, Tieza COO; and Ann Saldaña, MyEG CEO, during the formal launch of the Online Travel Tax Services System (OTTSS) with 90,000 payment channels in partnership with MyEG Philippines. This will allow traveling citizens to pay their travel tax online nationwide. NONIE REYES
HE Philippines will continue slapping special safeguard duties (SSG) on imported coffee products, particularly instant coffee, as long as the items are below the country’s trigger price to extend necessary protection to local farmers. This was Manila’s response to the query of Jakarta in a recent World Trade Organization Committee on Agriculture meeting regarding the Philippines’s imposition of SSG on imported coffee products. SSG duties is a trade mechanism that a country can impose on imported products that fall below a so-called trigger price See “Coffee,” A2
COVID ORIGINS, A MYSTERY 3 YEARS INTO PANDEMIC By Laura Ungar & Mary Clare Jalonick The Associated Press
W
ASHINGTON—A crucial question has eluded governments and health agencies around the world since the Covid-19 pandemic began: Did the virus originate in animals or leak from a Chinese lab? Now, the US Department of Energy has assessed with “low confidence” in that it began with a lab leak, according to a person familiar with the report who wasn’t authorized to discuss it. The report has not
been made public. But others in the US intelligence community disagree. “There is not a consensus right now in the US government about exactly how Covid started,” John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said Monday. “There is just not an intelligence community consensus.” The DOE’s conclusion was first reported over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal, which said the classified report was based on new intelligence and noted in an update to a 2021 document. The DOE oversees a national network of labs.
White House officials on Monday declined to confirm press reports about the assessment. In 2021, officials released an intelligence report summary that said four members of the US intelligence community believed with low confidence that the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a human, and a fifth believed with moderate confidence that the first human infection was linked to a lab. While some scientists are open to the lab-leak theory, others continue to believe the virus came from animals, mutated, and jumped into people—as has happened in the past with viruses.
Experts say the true origin of the pandemic may not be known for many years—if ever.
Calls for more investigation
THE US Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the report. All 18 offices of the US intelligence community had access to the information the DOE used in reaching its assessment. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, said she isn’t sure what new intelligence the See “Covid,” A2
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 55.3120 n JAPAN 0.4061 n UK 66.7395 n HK 7.0515 n CHINA 7.9663 n SINGAPORE 41.0723 n AUSTRALIA 37.2471 n EU 58.6916 n KOREA 0.0420 n SAUDI ARABIA 14.7397 Source:
BSP (28 February 2023)