Marcos: Despite inflation, peso not really weak  

MANILA, Philippines — For Senior Deputy Majority Speaker Sandro Marcos, the Philippine peso is not really weak despite high inflation rates in the past months.

“Peso is not weak because the peso is weak; the peso is weak because the (United States) dollar is strong,” said Marcos, representative of the first district of Ilocos Norte.

The lawmaker has pointed to the ongoing global crisis that prompted people to get dollars.

“If there is a crisis in the world, the impression that investors, consumers and shareholders get is the dollar is the safest currency to get against all other currency,” he noted.

When people buy dollars, there is a tendency for the demand for US dollars to also increase, making it stronger against all other currencies.

“If you see the trend of US dollar (against) other currencies such as the British pound, the Euro, yen and yuan, the dollar is on the rise,” he added.

But the lawmaker underscored that Philippine peso is still “stabilized” against Asian currencies like yen of Japan and yuan of China.

“On the bright side, we have many overseas Filipino workers here in Ilocos. So the remittances that they send, the value of dollar is high,” he said.

Marcos, however, maintained that since the Philippines is a “net importer,” the “temporary increase in prices will be more expensive and this has partly to do with war between Russia and Ukraine.”

According to Marcos, the Philippines still has a “significant amount of dollar reserves.”

While selling these dollars can be an option to taper the value of the dollar, this is not really practical since the crisis is happening not only in the Philippines but across the globe, he said.

He added that even if these dollar reserves are sold, its value is small compared to other currencies.

“So I think the best piece of advice would just be to sit back and hold tight. What the national government, I know, is doing is to focus on food security because as we are net importer of certain goods and services, we have to make sure that domestically we are able to produce that,” he said.