The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Rose de la Cruz
With its immense power, the Department of Agriculture is nothing to be scared about as far as agricultural stakeholders are concerned.
Rice traders and importers do not heed the maximum suggested retail price (SMRP) of DA, neither do meat and pork traders and importers.
Even its warnings on violations of current laws on imports and making available local supplies of food items seem to land in deaf ears and traders operate on their own agenda even if a law on anti agricultural smuggling and economic sabotage had been passed last year. This is because the market players know that outside of being blacklisted and fined, they would not land in jail or pay \the stiffest penalties, which though provided in the law, are not being enforced to the fullest extent.
DA’s very admission of its helplessness to run after smugglers and recalcitrant violators has emboldened everyone to ignore the department and its implementing rules and orders regarding the supply and prices of agricultural commodities.
Of late, the DA admitted that compliance to the MSRP for pork has been spotty, if at all, over a week after the scheme was implemented.
By DA’s admission, the compliances of 170 retailers monitored by the department was at best, only 20 percent (a fifth even) and that’s because traders pass on the product to retailers at very high prices even though farmgate prices for hogs have dropped.
Even fro rice, the MSRP for local and imported products have been disregarded in major markets and is being complied only by government-owned and operated Kadiwa stores– which get their stocks from the National Food Authority.
Even the farmgate prices for fresh and dry palay are very much below the farmgate levels set for the NFA since traders and those who lend to farmers dominate the market.
The DA said that on March 10, when it set the MSRP set for liempo (belly) of P380 per kg and for kasim (shoulder) and pigue (hind leg) of P350 per kg, actual retail prices were far beyond these rates.
The DA also set P300 per kg as MSRP for sabit ulo that traders would pass this item to retailers. Still compliance had been low (at 10 percent), except for the Kadiwa stores.
Pork sold in supermarkets and hypermarkets is exempt from the MSRP scheme due to their higher operating costs. The DA said farmgate prices for pork had dropped to P220 per kg.
“So, why can’t it reach P300 when in fact they agreed that the profit margin for viajeros (traders) should be P70 pesos?” the exasperated DA complained.
The DA said it expected the MSRP for pork to be broadly observed as hogs need to be sold faster after butchering. “It’s not like rice that you can store for a longer time,” the DA quipped.
Compliance level for rice on the first week was at 40 to 45 percent, but rates at the wet markets are gradually increasing above the MSRP, observers noted.
The DA said prevailing prices remain high for pork belly (P420 per kilo) and rear leg (P380). These rates are closer, but not accurately so, in the wet markets.
The DA would meet anew with market retailers and suppliers to determine the causes for the low compliance rate despite previous consultations and agreements reached.
Otherwise, the DA said the government, through the Food Terminal Inc. will step in– sourcing its pork from those smuggled items previously confiscated– to force them to comply.
This can also be done using FTI as direct importer and selling directly to consumers through the Kadiwa and local government units and the men in uniform– with which they had already collaborated in selling cheaper old rice to unclog the warehouses of NFA.