the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings. The Department of Finance is demanding a correction from the World Bank, citing the smaller data set used to assess the country's credit base. Inflation rate On July 5, 2018, the inflation rate of the country soared to 5.2%, its highest in 5 years. The inflation rate worsened the impacts of the government's new tax policy, increasing the price of all goods in the country. In September 2018, the inflation rate of the country further increased to 6.7%, its highest in a decade. President Duterte blamed American president Donald Trump for the inflation increase. Opposition Senator Francis Pangilinan, however, pointed out that if the United States was to blame, then all countries in ASEAN should have been experiencing the same, and only the Philippines had a very high inflation rate in the entire region at that time. On September 21, 2018, Duterte signed Administrative Order No. 13, removing non-tariff barriers in the importation of agricultural products, to address soaring inflation rates. According to ING, with food prices decreasing, the worst of the inflation crisis is over. Inflation decreased in November 2018, at 5.8 to 6.6 percent. BSP decreased its inflation forecast for 2019, after the passage of the rice tariffication bill. Inflation stayed at 6.7 percent in October 2018, higher than expected. July 2019 was met with a 2.4% inflation rate. October 2019 received an 0.8% inflation rate, the lowest under Duterte. However, this increased to 2.5% by December 2019. and increased again to 2.7% by July 2020. Income and employment Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, economic managers predicted the accession of the Philippine economy to upper-middle-income status by 2019, citing massive infrastructure spending and robust growth. COVID-19 pandemic Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin Diokno and then-NEDA Director-General Ernesto Pernia forecast that the Philippine economy would likely enter a recession in 2020 due to the effect of the pandemic. Diokno stated that, although the first quarter is likely to grow by 3% since the Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine only took effect near the end of the quarter, the second and third quarters would likely experience contractions in economic growth. The unemployment rate of the country continued to follow a downward trend since 2005, however, it reached a record-high 17.7% in April 2020, where 1 in every 5 persons in the labor force are unemployed, accounting to 7.3 million jobless Filipinos.