PRESIDENT Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. has ordered the Department of Agriculture (DA) to look into the recent “unreasonable” spike in the prices of chicken eggs.
During the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Marcos expressed concern on the “widening gap between farm gate and retail prices” of eggs, which made the food commodity more expensive.
DA said the retail price for eggs should be between P7 and P7.50 per piece, but reports said these are now being sold for as high as P9.60 per piece.
“We determined that the increase in the price of eggs is not commensurate with the increase in production cost,” said Marcos, who is also the concurrent head of DA.
He said DA officials will be meeting with egg producers and traders to determine the cause of the high retail price despite having enough supply of the food commodity in the market.
DA has also reconvened its Price and Volume Watch Committee and Advisory Groups for Livestock and Poultry to monitor the prices of eggs nationwide.
“We will have to have a look to see how to control that, because we cannot explain almost one-half of the profit margin that we are seeing. We cannot attribute it to cost,” Marcos said.
In its report to Malacañang, DA said the farmgate price of medium chicken eggs is pegged at P6.97 per piece
Earlier this month, DA said it is already trying to remove “certain layers of traders” to reduce the retail price of eggs.
And to ensure there will be sufficient market supply of eggs, it said the Bureau of Animal Industry is now working to eliminate the challenges faced by egg producers in their operations.