Pascual convenes price council to temper food costs

We have convened the Council to gather updates on the country’s price and supply situations so we can also implement initiatives to possibly temper price hikes.

Trade Secretary Pascual convened the National Price Coordinating Council to find ways to temper the ballooning prices of commodities, particularly food. He said external factors are influencing price movements locally.

Pascual, who also chairs the NPCC, asked its members to formulate ways to stabilize market prices of necessities and prime commodities and establish safeguards against unjustified price increases.

“The current global developments such as the ongoing war in Eastern Europe, renewed Covid-19 lockdowns in China, and the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes heavily affected prices of goods across the globe and escalated inflation,” he said.

“We have convened the Council to gather updates on the country’s price and supply situations so we can also implement initiatives to possibly temper price hikes,” Pascual added.

Republic Act 7581, or the Price Act, was formulated to protect consumers by stabilizing the prices of basic necessities and prime commodities and prescribing safeguards against unjustified price increases in emergencies and similar circumstances. The NPCC was established by the Price Act and headed by the DTI Secretary.

The NPCC was established as a mechanism to coordinate the government’s productivity, distribution, and stabilization programs, projects, and measures in the face of rising commodity prices.

On the other hand, the Trade Chief reminded that a whole-of-society approach is needed to manage the current domestic market situation, as well as backed the implementation of the National Information Network that will provide critical information on the price and volume of food production, a unified registry of farmers and fisherfolks, geo-tagging of production areas, among others.

The information provided will serve as a basis for strategic planning, including industry response, production decisions, and budget allocation.

Sugar now stable

At the said meeting, the Sugar Regulatory Administration reported that the prevailing prices of retail sugar in groceries and supermarkets in the National Capital Region as of November 2022 are P86/kilo for raw sugar, P87/kilo for washed sugar, and P106/kilo for refined sugar.

Meanwhile, sugar prices in wet and public markets in NCR are lower by P1 to P6.

On other agricultural goods, the Department of Agriculture reported that the prevailing retail prices for a kilo of local commercial rice are P50 (special), P45 (premium), P40 (well-milled) and P38 (regular milled).

Since August 2022, the prevailing retail price of pork has remained at P370/kilo, and prices of bangus, tilapia and local galunggong have remained stable.

The DA also shared that ‘Kadiwa ng Pasko’ offers sugar at P70 per kilo.

For its part, the Philippine Statistics Authority, the volume of production for Bali Sardinella, commonly known as Tamban, was at 80.23 thousand metric tons for the third quarter of 2022, a 17.18 percent decrease from the previous year.