The Senate Committees on Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform and Trade, Commerce and Entrepreneurship and the House Committee on Agriculture and Food will conduct separate investigations into the “alarming” increase in the prices of food products.
Quezon Rep. Mark Enverga, chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture and Food, said Speaker Lord Allan Velasco has directed the panel to conduct an immediate briefing on the concerns of rising prices of agricultural products, which has been set on February 2.
“The committee is tasked to assess current data on current supply and demand of all agricultural goods and to find a solution to the current predicament of both suppliers and consumers,” said Enverga.
Meanwhile, Deputy Speaker Bernadette Herrera has called out the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) on the increasing prices of meat and vegetables.
“It is high time that the DA and DTI do something about the rising cost of food prices being complained by the general public,” the Bagong Henerasyon representative said.
Herrera said it was as if the pandemic-induced economic crisis was not enough that people also had to suffer from skyrocketing food prices.
“It is not right that we let our people endure the soaring food prices since many of them have already lost their jobs and are facing a reduction in their income because of the pandemic,” Herrera said.
Herrera said the artificial hike in food costs needs to be curbed by enforcing strict measures to regulate the prices imposed by traders.
The DA has reported that the prices of most meats and vegetables have jumped by up to 66 percent in January.
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the increasing prices of food products already pushed the country’s inflation rate to 3.5 percent last December.
Herrera said she is looking forward to hearing the explanation of DA and DTI on the rising food prices in the investigation to be conducted by the House of Representatives.
Joint inquiry
The Senate opens Monday a joint inquiry by the committees on Agriculture, Food and Agrarian Reform with Trade, Commerce and Entrepreneurship to tackle “alarming increases” in prices of basic commodities and “soaring food prices.”
This, as Senator Imee Marcos sounded an alarm Sunday alerting the Duterte administration to avert the impending death of the local pork industry “faster than African swine fever” due to over importation.
Marcos, who chairs the Senate Economic Affairs Committee, pressed concerned authorities to reconsider the plan of the Department of Agriculture (DA) allowing upward adjustment of the minimum access volume of pork imports “as much as three times the present 54,000 metric tons [MT].”
Warning against its disastrous consequences, the Senator predicted pork importers will likely take over local market supply and “push Filipino producers out of business.”
In a statement over the weekend, Marcos predicted that “the slaughter of our local hog raisers will begin if the Department of Agriculture executes its plan to raise the minimum access volume of pork imports by as much as three times the present 54,000 MT.”
She surmised that the DA “may be overcompensating in its rush to increase imports to reduce consumer prices,” but added that “it may deal the coup de grace to our pork industry before Vietnam could release a vaccine against African swine fever [ASF] later this year.”
The Senator suggested that the DA should instead step up its probe into the hoarding of pork products seen to trigger an artificial hike in market prices amid the spread of ASF in Luzon.
At the same time, Marcos cited reports that “many local hog raisers have already shut down their business,” warning that allowing importation amid the Covid-19 pandemic means “more local jobs will be lost and surrendering the country’s food security to foreigners.”
She observed prices of pork imports from the United States, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Brazil suggested “excessive profits” were being made at the expense of consumers, citing the import cost of a 40-foot container of frozen pork belly (liempo) from Spain was P117.87 per kilo, already including a 40-percent tariff.
Marcos added: “Compare that to its market price of as much as P450 per kilo. Even if you add cold chain, storage and outlet delivery costs, the meat importer’s costs would only amount to about P153 per kilo.”
Apart from arresting hoarders and profiteers, the Senator suggested the Duterte government can bring down meat prices by subsidizing the cost of transporting pork products to Luzon, which imports about 80 percent of its supply from the Visayas and Mindanao.
Moreover, Marcos noted the DA got “the single biggest item for emergency and stimulus funding” under Bayanihan 2, amounting to P24 billion.
In filing Senate Resolution 619, she suggested that probers must mount a full-blown inquiry into “DA’s spending, as well as the failure of the Department of Trade and Industry to implement its suggested retail prices.”
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