This developed as the government is working towards increasing the country’s onion production, as consumers continued to deal with high prices.
“The long-term solution, of course, will be to increase production. And that’s what we are working on. So, these are measures that we are doing, these interventions are, I think, until we get in place, the systems that will start to get our production levels up,” he added.The DA has approved the importation of 21,060 metric tons of red and yellow onions to pull down its prices in wet markets, which still hover around P400 to P550 per kilo.
“What we see now are smaller onions being sold in the markets. The big onions are packed properly and clean looking, so technically speaking it’s hard to distinguish them ,” he added. At the same time, Dela Torre noted the BOC was not keen on filing complaints against Philippine Airlines flight crew members who were caught bringing in undeclared agriculture products as “pasalubong” or bring-home gifts.
Curiously, onion prices in government-run Kadiwa stores rose from P150 per kilo to P200 per kilo, an ABS-CBN television report noted yesterday, even as prices in two Quezon City markets began to drop from P280 to P330 per kilo from a high of P720 late last year. “It’s very simple analysis, you look at our production rate, and how many how much we produce and how much is the demand. And there’s no way you have to import,” he said.