The movement of pump prices in the Philippines will depend on the result of the policy rate review of the US Federal Reserve next week, a Department of Ebnnergy officials said on Tuesday.

During the "Laging Handa" public briefing, Rino Abad, Oil Industry Management Bureau director, said the US Federal Reserve has a plan to conduct policy rate review on July 26 to 27.

"Meaning, the US is considering in this review to possibly have another interest hike. If that will be amended by the US we know that other central banks in different parts of the world will follow," he said.

The Federal Reserve will digest the latest US inflation rate which reached a 40-year high of 9.1 percent.

"It appears that it will become a global action and there is a big chance that if this has happened it will be favorable for us, because we will have continued rollback," he added.

Abad noted that if the US Federal Reserve will have a different decision during the policy rate review, the Philippine may not be able to sustain oil price rollbacks.

"If the US will have a different decision on July 26 to 27, we have to observe, because we might not be able to sustain the continued rollback, if there is no additional round of interest hike," he said.

Philippine oil prices have been declining for three weeks.

Abad said global supply of oil remained tight but he explained that Tuesday's recent roll back in prices were caused by the lockdown in China and the continued interest hikes by central banks of different countries."One of the aspects is the decrease of fuel demand because the economic activity in China has slowed down. Second is the continued implementation on a global scale of the interest hike of the central banks. Different countries continued the program to control the inflation," he said. Robina Asido/DMS