The Ferdinand Marcos Jr. government registered another record this week, seeing the Philippine peso hitting its lowest value in history.
The peso closed at ₱59.735 per US dollar on Friday, surpassing previous lows of ₱59.50 last March 9 and ₱59.425 last January.
The depreciation is blamed largely to increased oil import costs and fears of rising economic uncertainty due to US and Israel’s war in the Middle East.
The development is simultaneous with record-high oil price hikes with the price of diesel increasing to ₱90/liter in Metro Manila and way past ₱100 in other parts of the country.
Industry experts also warned of more oil price shocks next week, predicting an average increase of about ₱20 in both diesel and gasoline prices strting Tuesday and forcing energy agencies to beg petroleum retailers for more staggered price roll outs.
The oil price and currency crises come after the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) announced that the country suffered the highest increase in unemployment in the last 43 months.
The PSA said the unemployment Rate increased to 5.8% in January 2026, up from 4.4% last December.
It said the number of unemployed jumped to 2.96 million, an increase of 700,000 from the 2.26 million reported at the end of last year.
Militant labor federation Kilusang Mayo Uno warned that unemployment would only worsen with the return of hundreds overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) fleeing the war in West Asia.
“The OFWs will not be happy if they would be forced to come home by the US-Israel War against Iran. It would not just be their families that will welcome them back but hunger and poverty,” KMU said.
The Marcos government has nothing but stop-gap solutions, such as “job fairs” and enticing foreign investments for the crises, KMU said.
The group reiterated its call for national industrialization as a long-term solution to economic problems brought about by wars and other global crises. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)