Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Tintin and I went to SM North EDSA this afternoon.

We had buffet merienda at Cabalen's before we we went to do some grocery shopping.

At the mall's grocery, the first item I always pick when shopping is the rice. I normally buy 2 - 5 kg of Jasmine Rice (enough for one week consumption). To my surprise, from Php 47.50 per kilo ten days ago, it went up to Php 62.50! A Php 15.00 per kilo price increase was very shocking and they told me it will still go up.

Two years ago, the dollar exchange rate was Php 55.00 and the cost of Thai rice was Php 40.00. Today, Thai rice is Php 68.50 and the dollar exchange rate is Php 41.00!!!

Budgeting these past few months is quite hard to do in spite of lower dollar exchange rate, I still cannot figure out why prices are going up while dollar rate is going down?

I now realize why evening news always feature rice buyers falling in a long line to buy 3-4 kilo of packed NFA rice. Commercial rice is now over US$1.50 per kilo! Even if I want to buy more rice to save some penny in case its price will go up again, I still have to balance my spending...

Randy told me prices of commodities in San Diego are also rising...

In a third world country like the Philippines with nearly 90 million population, high unemployment rate, and prime commodities' prices rising, most overseas Filipino workers (OFW) abroad who contributed to the country's economic growth are also suffering from their lower take home salary since the dollar to peso exchange rate went down.

I have three brothers working in Saudi Arabia and a sister working in Hong Kong. They're complaining how hard it is for them to send money to their families here in the Philippines to meet their families' daily needs.

At times like this, I was wondering how I will manage our budget on my next shopping if every other day, the prices of commodities shock the consuming public.