Philippine headline inflation accelerated to 7.2 percent in September from 6.1 percent in August, marking the fastest price increase in the last four months.

In a press briefing at the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Tuesday, Economic Undersecretary and National Statistician Claire Dennis Mapa said the main source of higher inflation is faster increases in the price of food, utilities costs and fuel.

Headline inflation covers all items in the consumer basket, including the volatile food and energy sector.

Rice, in particular, had the highest inflation at 20.3 percent from August's 19.4.

The 1.1 percentage point increase, which surprised some economists, was within the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas forecast of 6.4 percent to 7.4 percent.

But the central bank, in a statement, said ''it will continue to assess the impact of latest developments in the Middle East and weather disturbances on the outlook for inflation and growth. ''

"We also had 7.2 percent inflation last April, but they are equal, if you look at the time series of our historical data, the last inflation rate higher than this was the 7.6 percent that we saw last March of 2023," Mapa said.

"For the core inflation the 4.7 percent recorded for September 2026 is the highest since October of 2023 where our core inflation recorded that month was at 5.3 percent," he added.

The BSP said 7.2 percent inflation brought the average headline inflation for the first nine months of 2026 at 5.4 percent.

"This was above the full-year target of 3.0 percent and beyond the tolerance range of ± 1 percentage point," said BSP.

When asked for an inflation outlook, Mapa noted that the PSA is seeing a lot of risk factors that may affect the prices of commodities in the country in the coming months.

"What we are seeing is that there is a lot of risk, our inflation rate at least the month on month update is spread in many commodity groups, 11 out of 13 and in terms of areas it also spread 16 out of 18 regions," he said.

"While we hope that it will go down, what we are seeing is that there are a lot of risks in terms of the item plus the heavy weights in the basket, the food, energy and transport," he added.

Mapa also noted that the recent fare increase was not yet included in the September inflation as the implementation just started late last month.

"The recent increase in fare was implemented in the last few days of September so it did not enter our calculation, and it will appear in the month of October," he said.

"The increase is also substantial because the weight in overall inflation for the other passengers transported by road is 3.5 percent," he added. Robina Asido/PHS