President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. played down the 6.1 percent inflation rate for the month of June reported by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) early Tuesday.,In his first media briefing as president, Marcos said that he disagrees with the figure and that the inflation rate was actually “not that high”.,“The inflation rate is a problem not only in the Philippines but everywhere,” said Marcos when asked about his administration’s plan to address the inflation rate after it surged to the highest level since October 2018.,Unaware of the latest figure, Marcos asked Communications Secretary Trixie Cruz Angeles about the inflation rate as reported by the PSA.,Angeles said it was at 6.1 percent, to which Marcos replied: “I think I will have to disagree with that number.”,“We are not that high. We have crossed the — our targets were less four percent or less,” he said.,“Unfortunately, it looks like we may cross that threshold. We will transcend the four percent. That’s why again we have to think about interest rate levels.”,Marcos is depending on the central bank’s inflation targeting to achieve price stability.,“We are having to be careful because essentially our economic policy right now our monetary policy right now is essentially to use interest rates to hold, to take control of the inflation rate,” he said.,“We are not looking specifically to the exchange rates now. What we are talking about, what we are targeting is the inflation rate. So that’s what we are doing.”,He said “the forces that have pushed the commodity prices up” are “beyond our control”.,“Much of our inflation is actually imported inflation. It is imported because it is the inflation on the products that have suffered inflation that we import,” Marcos said.