Senator Imee Marcos, chairwoman of the Senate Economic Affairs committee, has expressed worry that the staples of an ordinary Filipino’s breakfast and merienda would continue to shrink and no longer satisfy a groaning stomach.
Marcos said consumers would surely balk at the three-peso increase that producers of pandesal and Tasty bread are asking for.
"With the way things are going, pandesal might just shrink to the size of a marble,” she added.
“Rising raw material costs and operating expenses are forcing producers to increase their prices while customers’ budgets remain tight amid the pandemic,” she pointed out.
In pushing for the three-peso increase in the prices of Tasty bread and pandesal, producers cited that the present P35 per loaf and P21.50 per 10-piece bag date back to 2016.
Marcos called on the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to consider a price freeze on raw material costs to ease the burden of neighborhood bakeries in particular.
The lady senator added that another solution would be to import flour on a government-to-government basis, but only for emergency use.
A longer-term solution would be to add value to bread by increasing its nutritional content as with the famous protein-enriched Nutribun in the 70’s, Marcos said.
“Like the Nutribun, bread can be made with locally available non-wheat flours from camote, cassava, monggo, squash, potato, and rice. It can further be protein-enriched with peanut and malunggay,” Marcos explained.
Cost comparisons for wheat-based flour in 2020 and 2022 showed the price of first-class flour rising from P670 to P970, all-purpose flour from P900 to P1,140, and third-class flour from P600 to P890.
The cost of LPG used for bread ovens also shot up from P52 per kilogram in 2020 to P65.15 today.
The costs of other bread ingredients also went up from P2,386 to P3,476 for a 40-kilogram pail of shortening, from P2,100.15 to P3,490 for a 45-kilogram pail of margarine, from P2,200 to P3,100 for a 50-kilogram bag of sugar, and from P1,890 to P2,200 for the same amount of brown sugar.
Milk products also reflected cost hikes of P4,100 to P5,700 for a 25-kilogram bag of skimmed milk powder, P1,820.16 to P1,951.20 for 48 cans of evaporated milk, and P2,566.56 to P2,679.84 for the same quantity of condensed milk.
Only bread improver and instant dried yeast remained unchanged at P1,500 and P1,950 per case, respectively.