What importers are eagerly awaiting is for the Department of Agriculture (DA) to announce that it is looking at allowing the importation of a “small quantity’ of vegetables, which it just did, and this is good music to their ears.
"Small quantity" could be in terms of variety of vegetables and volumes (in metric tons) to be allowed to enter the country in time for the Yuletide season.
Mind you, they are just now preparing their dollars to gulp up whatever cheap veggies they could find out there, bring them in at reduced tariffs and voila! sell them high to retailers in wet markets and supermarkets, which in turn will jack up even more the end prices to consumers.
In the end, everybody is happy, but not the consumers, and more so not the vegetable growers of our country.
As always, the DA's cure- all for supply gaps is importation which goes through many layers from granting of permits, to ordering them outside, then shipping them here (and if facilitated out of Customs, somebody gets something again), then sold to warehouse operators who in turn pass on to final merchants in wet markets and groceries.
So with each layer, someone earns something. The final price then becomes prohibitive to consumers, while local farmers are at the mercy of middlemen (who buy their products at almost below production cost) and deliver the same to the final market, at very high prices.
The DA said on Thursday, November 21, that it is looking to allow limited quantities of vegetable imports because of high local prices on account of successive typhoons that hit the country this November.
“We are seeing that we need to import a small quantity of white onions… carrots, tomatoes, and broccoli,” Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel, Jr. told reporters on the sidelines of an event organized by the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food, Inc., Business World reported.
Laurel, however, said the DA is still determining the specific volumes to allow for import.
“There are no final figures yet. But it is being studied by the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI),” he added.
Laurel ordered the BPI and the High Value Crops office to monitor prices and supply of vegetables to aid in any decision to intervene in the market.
The DA said the increase in vegetable prices was caused by production losses after six consecutive typhoons hit key vegetable growing areas of Nueva Vizcaya (which is now peaking their onion harvest), Cagayan, Central Luzon, Quezon, Laguna, and Batangas.
DA Spokesman Arnel de Mesa said vegetable imports typically service demand from the hotel and restaurant industry, while processed vegetables are brought in by food manufacturers.
DA price monitors showed that in Metro Manila markets, prices as of Nov. 20 per kilogram of carrot are at P230; tomatoes P230, broccoli P470, and white onion P140.
In October, carrots sold for as much as P160 per kilo, tomatoes P180, white onion at P140, and broccoli P570. (See related story https://opinyon.net/national/check-disconnect-in-farmgate-retail-prices )
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