DA, DTI PIN HOPES ON PRICE-FREEZE ORDER ON PORK AND CHICKEN
THE Department of Agriculture (DA) is hoping that President Duterte will issue within the week an Executive Order (EO) imposing a price ceiling on pork and chicken to temper rising prices of these commodities.
This comes as Agriculture Secretary William D. Dar blamed traders and wholesalers for the “tight” supply, saying they are the culprits behind the recent skyrocketing of pork prices beyond P400 per kilogram.
Dar, in a virtual press briefing on Thursday, assured the public that the country has sufficient food supply except for pork, which he noted is suffering from a “tight supply.”
Meanwhile on Monday, Malacañang said President Duterte will make the “right decision” on the proposal to impose a price freeze to arrest the spike in the prices of pork and poultry products.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said they are now just awaiting the President’s action on the recommended price ceiling by the Department of Agriculture (DA).
“That is a recommendation made for the President and I trust the President will make the right decision,” Roque said in an online press briefing.
Last week, DA said it is pushing to implement a price ceiling, effective for 60 days, of P270 on kasim and P300 on liempo.
This, after prices of pork in the market reached as high as P400 per kilogram due to the supposed low supply of the product amid the spread of the African swine fever (ASF).
Strong enforcement
IF the proposed price cap is implemented, Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said they will be coordinating with the DA and local government units (LGU) through the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) to enforce it.
He said they will also strengthen the Local Price Coordinating Council.
Should the President reject the DA’S proposal, Lopez said they will rely on other measures to bring down the prices of pork through importation.
Hoarders
LOPEZ said they also met on Monday with an “economic intelligence group” comprising supply chain stakeholders to determine if there are groups involved in hoarding pork products so as to artificially jack up prices.
“This will involve intelligence work, when it comes [to] the activities between farmgate and the market, traders in between warehouses,” Lopez said.
“Those who are are hoarding and stopping [the release] of the supply to increase prices, that will be our next focus,” he added.
labor support
THE Associated Labor union (ALU) backed the proposed price freeze as well as the prosecution of hoarders to ensure workers can still afford basic necessities.
In his letter addressed to President Duterte, ALU National Executive Vice President Gerard R. Seno admonished the DA and DTI for allowing “pricegouging middlemen, traders, retailers, and hoarders,” to continue their operations.
“What they are engaged in is economic sabotage, and government must go after them hammer-and-tongs. The ineptitude and lack of political will of both DA and the DTI in enforcing the Proclamation must become a thing of the past,” Seno said.
Timely policies
To further help workers struggling with the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic, ALU proposed a wage subsidy for the beneficiaries of the emergency employment program of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).
It also appealed for the deployment of DTI’S Diskuwento Caravan and DA’S Kadiwa stores in factory stores in factory zones and low-income communities; direct agri-producer co-op linkages with workers co-ops, unions and employees; and the extension of Proclamation 1081 indefinitely to freeze prizes of basic commodities.
Interagency panel
A few days before the Thursday briefing, Dar formed an interagency committee to assess the situation and validate the pork shortage in the country, a key condition in moving forward the DA’S plan to triple the minimum access volume (MAV) for pork imports. (Related story: https://
businessmirror.com.ph/2021/01/25/
da-led-panel-to-study-mavhike-for-pork-imports-formed/)
The Businessmirror first broke the story last week that the DA is looking at the possibility of increasing the MAV for pork to boost domestic supply and stabilize retail prices. (Related story: https://
businessmirror.com.ph/2021/01/18/
asf-prompts-phl-to-mull-over-hikein-mav-allocation-for-pork/).
Under existing laws, the President is empowered to propose to Congress “revisions, modifications or adjustments” of the MAV in case of “shortages.”
Draft EO
DAR said the office of the Executive Secretary is now evaluating the draft Eo that they submitted.
The Eo would impose a price ceiling on pork at P270 per kilogram for kasim/ pigue parts and P300 per kg for liempo. The Eo would also put in place a P160 per kg price ceiling for dressed chicken.
Dar added that the Eo would “prevent opportunistic businesses,” like traders and wholesalers, from illegally manipulating the prices of basic necessities and prime commodities.
Dar explained that they came up with the price ceiling figures by analyzing the average price for pork in the past 5 months and past 3 months for chicken.
The agriculture chief said they made the recommended price ceiling based on “very solid data.”
Dar added that the country could now be considered under state of calamity due to ASF, which would be the basis for the imposition of a price ceiling.
Under the country’s Price Act, the President can impose a price ceiling if any of the conditions are met: impendency, existence or effects of calamity; threat, existence or effect of an emergency; prevalence or widespread acts of illegal price manipulation; impendency, existence, or effect of any event that causes artificial and unreasonable increase in the price of the basic necessity or prime commodity; and whenever the prevailing price of any basic necessity or prime commodity has risen to unreasonable levels.
furthermore, republic Act 7581 or the Price Act stipulates that the price ceiling on a commodity should be the average price of a commodity in the last three months immediately preceding the proclamation of the price ceiling.
from P300 per kg, pork prices jumped to P350 per kg and hovered at P400 per kg level in recent months due to supply reduction caused by Asf-related actions, such as culling and reduction of stocks.
As for dressed chicken prices, these have gone up to P170 per kg and continues to remain at the said price level on the back of rising demand.
Dar said the other measures recommended to Duterte are: consolidation of hogs to be transported for Metro Manila markets; slaughtering of hogs and packaging/blast freezing and cold storage; and identifying supermarkets to receive pork from Mindanao.
The DA will “increase” their interaction and dialogue with the Philippine Competition Commission “to investigate traders and wholesalers engaging in the manipulation and supply of prices,” Dar said.
‘Galunggong,’ too—poe
THE DA, meanwhile, was asked to include galunggong in the list of goods subject to a price freeze even as Senator Grace Poe prodded the DA to identify the calamity that triggered the price freeze.
Poe pointed out that the price of galunggong in wet markets has been “extremely high in the past few days and has become barely affordable to ordinary consumers.”
In a statement, Poe cited a DA recommendation asking Malacañang to impose a “price ceiling/freeze” on pork and chicken.
however, “if we really want to help our people, we should also give attention to galunggong or at the very least implement the SRP of P140 per kilo that even the DA’S own price monitoring showed was already at P240 per kilo last December,” Poe said.
Poe noted that under the Price Act, the President may impose a price ceiling on basic necessities or prime commodities if there is a calamity, an emergency, widespread illegal price manipulation, if prices have risen to unreasonable levels or there is an event that will result in an unreasonable increase in prices.
She lamented that the price ceilings the DA is seeking are higher than its SRP, even as she noted that “even the DA’S own price monitoring shows that the Srps were no longer followed in Metro Manila early in December.”
“This time, we are asking the DA to identify and punish those manipulating prices, not just for pork and chicken but also for fish and vegetables, if there was profiteering,” Poe said.
Poe pointed out that under the Price Act, the price ceiling on a product is determined by its average price in the three months prior to the proclamation, the availability of supply, the cost to producers including labor and transportation. “If the DA has been monitoring prices, why did it allow the situation to reach this point? what caused the ‘calamity’ or ‘emergency’? why is the move to increase importation happening only now?”