The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) will fasttrack the launch of an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered comprehensive real-time price guide app that will eventually replace the suggested retail price (SRP) bulletin system.
In a press briefing on Friday, DTI Assistant Secretary Amanda Nograles said the agency in the meantime will introduce a new feature in the SRP to indicate unit cost on all 217 stock keeping units of basic and prime commodities (BNPC) being monitored by the agency to address consumer concerns on shrinkflation.
Nograles said the DTI aims to make consumers less dependent on the SRP bulletin which is incomplete, not real time, covers very limited items and is determined by manufacturers.
“With the e-presyo app, you can put all information available and everybody can take part,” she said.
Nograles explained the e-presyo, which is currently available on the DTI website, will be a free service containing crowdsourced information inputted by manufacturers, retailers, consumers and price monitors of the products.
AI will then filter the data to indicate the prices of these products in specific locations, giving consumers the choice where to buy.
“It’s very much like Waze where (motorists) can input their location and indicate if there is traffic in a specific place. We can take advantage of AI to make sure data is reliable and more accurate,” Nograles said. “E-presyo is real time compared to SRP which is published once as a snapshot of all the price points of a particular date which might not be effective at another time.”
E-presyo is now on data cleanup and software phase. The current system contains prices of 217 BNPCs in the SRP bulletin and 256 more BNPCs not covered by the bulletin in key cities all over the country.
Nograles said manufacturers received positively DTI’s plan to indicate the per unit cost of BNPCs in the next SRP bulletin. Initially, the agency had proposed to standardize the grams and volume of BNPCs but this would entail additional cost to manufacturers.
