With the skyrocketing price of onions taking a toll on consumers, various government functionaries are dipping their hands into the crisis in a bid to address the problem.
The Office of the Ombudsman recently announced it is investigating the issue, while the Senate recently conducted an inquiry into the problem. Progressive congressmen in the House of Representatives filed a resolution calling for an investigation.
Now comes the Department of Trade and Industry which announced that it will convene the National Price Coordinating Council to craft recommendations to tackle the onion supply woes.
The move of these agencies may be a bit late as onion prices are slowly tapering off, though is still very high, after hitting as high as ₱800 a kilo last month. Nevertheless, it is a welcome development as there is an urgent need to address the current crisis and find ways to prevent it from recurring.
These agencies, while acting separately, should get to the bottom of the problem — find out its root cause and elicit recommendations on how to come up with solutions to address the problem.
So, what triggered the problem? Everybody knows there was a low supply of onions, particularly during the Christmas season when demand was high. In the law on supply and demand in economics, price surges when supply is low. And this came into play when the price of onions skyrocketed due to limited supply.
As early as August last year, the Department of Agriculture (DA) already warned of dwindling supply of onions. A senior official even bared that the DA suspects a syndicate is hoarding onions, causing the price to soar.
Those developments should have served as a warning to the DA of the portent of things to come. It should have immediately buckled down to work and find out if a real shortage is coming or it is a case of hoarding to manipulate prices during the Christmas season when demand was high.
Despite the knowledge of dwindling supply, it now appears the DA failed to come up with a contingency plan to address the issue.
No doubt, senators took turns in blaming the DA for the crisis.
“The price of onions had taken us on this mad rollercoaster ride during the last few months. It is apparent that there is an abject lack of planning , therefore,” Sen. Imee Marcos, who initiated the Senate investigation, told DA officials present at the inquiry.
A timely and well-projected minimal importation during the off season could have averted the shortage, she added.
Former Agriculture secretary William Dar joined senators in blaming the DA for lack of planning.
“They knew there was a deficiency... but why did they not proceed ?” Dar said in a recent TV interview.
After all these investigations and inquiries, what is important is for all stakeholders to buckle down to work and come up with the right solution.
What is urgently needed now is a short-term solution to stabilize the price of onion and immediately address the cries of suffering consumers. Beyond this, a long-term policy must be crafted to keep the problem from recurring — steady onion supply, punitive measures against hoarders and even smugglers, support for local farmers, and other measures that will benefit the public.
Listen to the cries of consumers.