‘Don’t panic,’ Marcos says as peso’s historic slide continues

MANILA — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Wednesday sought to allay public concern as the peso continued to weaken versus the dollar. 

The peso closed at a fresh record low of 64.17 to the dollar on Tuesday. 

Marcos noted that soaring global oil prices continued to weigh on the local currency. 

But he said the country had “all the means” to continue defending the peso, including “healthy” foreign exchange reserves.

“First of all, do not take it with alarm. Don’t panic,” Marcos Jr. told reporters in a chance interview after his visit at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City on Wednesday, October 28.

“People can take solace in the fact that our policy towards the peso is to continue to defend the peso as hard as we possibly can. We have all the tools to defend the peso… With that in mind, we will continue to do all we can to make sure that the value of the peso does not continue to go down,” he added. 

When the peso depreciates, ordinary households feel it primarily through higher prices. Because the Philippines relies heavily on imports for energy, raw materials, and agricultural commodities, a weaker peso trickles down into daily living costs.

Pressed about how to address the rising cost of goods and services, the President said that the country’s inflation was supply-driven and that “monetary measures can only go so far.”

“We have to do other ways. It’s basically oil. We can do nothing about. Food, we can,” Marcos said.

“And we are doing, again, everything that we can to make sure that the prices of food come down,” he said.