Consumers should not buy a kilogram or more of onions as its current price is now more than triple the suggested retail price (SRP), a Department of Agriculture (DA) official said Wednesday.
DA deputy spokesperson Rex Estoperez said that in select markets in Metro Manila, the price of large onions was already at P550/kg, while smaller ones were priced at P440/kg.
He said the SRP of onions was just P170/kg, while the farmgate prices were around P300/kg.
“It seems like a lot of people will be angry with me on this, but to be reasonable and practical, let’s not buy a kilo of onions. Let’s buy only what we can afford,” Estoperez said in a Super Radyo dzBB interview.
In a separate GMA News report, the price of red onions at the Las Piñas Public Market soared to P720 per kilo on Wednesday, 20 percent higher than the P600 per kilo on Tuesday.
The price increased because vendors had to pay their suppliers P680 per kilo on Wednesday, the report added. Vendors also had to pay for parking fees at the market and for shipping charges from their suppliers – even as onion prices could still rise in the next few days.
In October, the DA set an SRP of P170 per kilogram of red onions in wet markets in Metro Manila following the rise in prices of agricultural commodities.
Estoperez said the DA will still check if there is a need to import onions early next year if the supply does not normalize by then – following his announcement a day earlier that the Agriculture Department is no longer considering the importation of onions given the expected local harvest in January and February.
“Let’s see this coming harvest season in January and February if the onion supply will still be thin. Let’s decide by then what to do. We should ask ourselves: Are we really producing enough, or do we have to import? We may also have a problem with our government interventions as to why onion production is the way it is,” he said.
Estoperez earlier said the DA will focus on possible interventions for the commodity, including credit for farmers, and providing them assistance in terms of logistics, transportation, cold storage, and packaging.
“Prices are dictated by supply and demand, so if the supply from production is weak, the prices will increase,” he said in Filipino. “We have supplies, but not in abundance.”
Estoperez said it would be hard to dictate prices of the commodity given the high cost of production, and strictly enforcing the SRP would deter farmers from selling.
“It looks like we will have difficulties in enforcement because if we place it in our hands and dictate, no one will be selling because of the high investment,” he said.
The official noted the harvest season of onions is expected in the coming months, but there is still no estimate as to its volume due to the recent typhoons that hit the country.