The powerful Commission on Appointments (CA) confirmed on Wednesday, February 1, Alfredo E. Pascual as secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
The confirmation was done during the CA plenary session at the Senate building and which was presided by Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri, concurrent CA chairman.
Pascual’s confirmation was recommended by Representative Manuel Guico, CA vice chairman, after a lengthy discussion on Pascual’s ability to help market the produce of farmers such as onions and garlic .
Legislators complain that farmers are at the mercy of traders.
Both Zubiri and Senator Cynthia A. Villar, chairperson of the Senate agriculture committee, said the increase of the farm gate prices of agricultural produce to very high prices at the market is almost "criminal."
Zubiri said Pascual’s DTI should take care of the pricing of agricultural produce once they leave the farms.
He complained that a P100 per kilo of garlic at the farm now fetches P400 per kilo in the market price.
Another produce whose farmgate price which is P25 is now at an atrocious P600 per kilo at the market, Villar said.
‘’We in business are not allowed to do that. That is not a normal business practice," she added. Her family fortunes are in realty.
To help farmers, Villar pressed for the formation of cooperatives for small farmers.
There are 1.6 million farmers who own two hectares or less of land distributed under the agrarian reform law.
Villar urged the DTI to put its foot down in implementing price control policies against "unreasonable" costs of goods.
The government, she added, should not tolerate unscrupulous traders.
"There seems to be a pattern of manipulation," lamented Villar, who recently led a legislative inquiry on the soaring prices of onions in Philippine markets.
"Like they are doing it on purpose because prices are too much...We must do something more serious about this, because it's a pattern," she said in a mix of Filipino and English.
Villar also complained why government has not gone after traders who had been identified as price manipulators of imported agricultural produce.
She complained lhat the Bureau of Customs (BOC) determines which is large scale economic sabotage which is not bailable but is slow in bringing charges against them.