High Prices? Don’t Buy Onions By The Kilo – DA
Current retail prices are more than double the suggested retail price set by the Department of Agriculture last October, when a kilo of the commodity was priced at around P200.
With prices of red onions reaching as high as P720 a kilo, the Department of Agriculture (DA) advised consumers to buy only what they can, instead of an entire kilo.
“To be reasonable and practical, let’s not buy one kilo. Let’s just buy what we can for now,” Agriculture deputy spokesman Rex Estoperez said in a mix of English and Filipino in an interview with dzBB on Wednesday, Dec. 28.
Estoperez said the DA will continue to monitor the prices of red and white onions.
In the same interview, Estoperez explained that the supply of onions is thin, adding that the demand for onions is high because of the holiday season.
“We are looking that if this continues, we will see this coming January, February harvest season, if it is still really that thin, then we will decide what to do,” he said in Filipino.
At a "Laging Handa" briefing on Tuesday, Dec. 27, Estoperez said the agency is not considering importing onions as harvests start next month.
Based on the DA’s price monitoring, the farm gate price of onions is at around P300 per kilogram.
“When we went to production areas like Tarlac, there are some harvests. We have supply, but not enough,” he said.
Current retail prices are more than double the suggested retail price set by the DA last October, when a kilo of the commodity was priced at around P200.
Even as farm gate prices range between P250 and P370 per kilo, Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura executive director Jayson Cainglet said retail prices should only be around P430 to P450 per kilo.
Cainglet noted that farmers should not be blamed for the high retail prices.
“Obviously, the traders are mixing in the imports and smuggled onions that have yet to be apprehended to artificially kick the local farm gate price to justify the current onion prices,” he said.
“The harvest is not that much to justify the high retail prices of onions because the farm gate price has kicked up,” he added.
Cainglet said the government needs to intervene “post-farm gate up to the retail stage.”
On the DA’s part, Estoperez admitted that the agency needs to identify the interventions needed in the production areas to protect farmers and consumers.
“There are interventions that are needed especially in the value chain. What do they need? First is credit, logistics, including transportation, cold storage and packaging,” he said.
