SAN FERNANDO CITY, Pampanga, Philippines?The country faces higher food prices this month as a result of the recent back-to-back storms, according to the National Economic Development Authority.

?We expect an uptick in food inflation because of the typhoons,? NEDA director general Augusto Santos told President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at Tuesday?s Cabinet meeting here. ?Philippine food prices are stable for now, but the threats remain.?

The backdrop of Santos? report was the latest Social Weather Stations survey showing that the number of families experiencing involuntary hunger at least once in the last three months was now down by 2.8 percentage points. The decline translates to around 500,000 families.

But the survey was conducted before the onslaught of tropical storm ?Ondoy? (international codename: Ketsana) and typhoon ?Pepeng? (Parma) which destroyed farms. Santos pegged the damage to agriculture from the two cyclones at P23.5 billion.

Albay Governor Joey Salceda, one of Arroyo?s economic advisers, warned earlier that the country?s food security might have been compromised as a result of the calamities.

Santos said the current prices of rice were higher than the rates before the food crisis last year.

He said the problem might have had something to do with increasing population, growing economies, rising output cost, limited hectarage for rice, and urbanization.

?We are trying to trace the causes of these increasing rice prices,? he said.