P20/kg rice for wage earners starts June 13 –Tiu Laurel
The Department of Agriculture (DA) will restore the maximum suggested retail price (MSRP) for pork by either late July or early August, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said on Thursday.
Tiu Laurel told reporters in Manila City, the MSRP on pork was pegged at P380 per kilogram for liempo (pork belly) and P350 per kg for kasim (pork shoulder) and pigue (pork’s leg), before it was suspended two weeks ago.
For the MSRP to be effective, the government through the Food Terminal Inc. (FTI) would have to intensify its efforts to sell pork directly to the public.
The pork MSRP was put on hold in mid-May as the DA looked for ways to make it more effective and improve compliance by retailers and traders.
In April, the FTI signed a memorandum of agreement with the local unit of Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Foods PLC. The Thai company committed to supply 100 live hogs per day at a discounted price, which would then be sent directly to a slaughterhouse in Caloocan City.
The DA said the arrangement would lessen the supply chain participants as the distributors and transporters would receive the live hogs directly instead of fetching them from different farms.
Hogs would then be cut into fresh pork parts and delivered to different retailers in wet markets.
“We have to set up in the 38 Metro Manila public markets. We have to set up the booths, the freezer systems, the trucks. We need the drivers and everything. So, once that is in place, then we will launch (back the pork MSRP),” Tiu Laurel said.
The DA has requested P500 million from Malacañang to intensify the DA-FTI direct sales scheme to consumers, but the money would only be used if the DA runs out of funds.
“That is a standby money in case we need it. But I’m thinking that we may not need to subsidize since it is sustainable,” Tiu Laurel said.
“The margins of the middlemen are really big as there are agents, wholesalers and the likes that we want to eliminate,” he added.
“Technically, we will not have losses here. FTI can still earn while lowering the price of pork,” Tiu Laurel said.
The DA has been working to deliver 150,000 metric tons of pork for direct selling in Metro Manila. This volume would be enough until January 2026, he said.
Subsidized rice
Tiu Laurel also said the P20-per-kilogram subsidized rice for minimum wage earners will start on June 13.
The DA earlier said that the Department of Labor and Employment identified an initial batch of 120,000 minimum wage earners with the help of factories and private companies that decided to participate in the P20 per kg pilot test for workers.
Wage earners will be allowed to purchase up to 10 kilos of NFA rice at P20 per kilo per month the DA said.
Based on the DA’s public markets monitoring in the National Capital Region, local well-milled rice sold for P38 to P48 per kg on May 28, Wednesday, while regular milled rice went for P35 to P42 per kg.
Imported well-milled rice was selling for P40 to P48 per kg while the price of imported regular milled rice ranged from P35 to P45 per kg.
Special-variety imported rice fetched P52 to P61 and premium rice P42 to P50.
Special-variety local rice was selling for P50 to P65 per kg while premium rice went for P44 to P60 per kg.
These varieties are priced based on regular market forces and factors, and are not subsidized.
In the same monitoring activity, the prevailing prices of pork ham ranged from P350 to P430 per kg, pork belly P370 to P480, frozen kasim P230 to P300, and frozen liempo from P290 to P350.
