The P41 to P45 rice price cap being imposed by the government may last until October if the retail price of rice does not drop to P38 per kilo, an official of the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.
In an ambush interview on Thursday night, Sept. 28, DA Senior Usec. Domingo F. Panganiban said the agriculture department has recommended to President Marcos to lift the price cap once the retail price of rice hits P38 per kilo.
“Sa amin [sa DA], ang pag-iisip namin, kung bababa ng P38 ang presyo ng bigas, baka siguro mag-isip ang Presidente na ibaba (For us [in the DA], our thinking is that, if the price of rice goes down to P38, the President may consider to lift it),” he said.
Citing their recent monitoring, Panganiban said the retail price of rice went down by P5 per kilo, but he said such is still not enough.
“Bumababa nang limang piso [presyo ng bigas] pero hindi pa tumataas nang more than P5. Hindi pa enough ‘yung five siguro ang iniisip ng presidente mas malaki sa singko pesos but I don’t know what the President is thinking about (The price of rice went down by P5 but the decrease did not go beyond P5. It is still not enough, maybe the President wants it to decrease by more than P5 but I don’t know what the President was thinking),” the DA official said.
For now, he said, the price ceiling on rice will remain for the benefit of consumers reeling from the high prices of commodities.
Panganiban allayed the fears of rice farmers that the farmgate price of rice may go down due to the implementation of the cap.
“Hindi bababa ang farmgate price [ng palay] dahil kapag sinabi ng Presidente ‘yun ang price cap (The farmgate price of palay will not decrease because when the President says that is the price cap, that’s it),” he said.
According to DA’s price monitoring as of Sept. 28, the cheapest rice sold in Metro Manila is Local Regular Milled Rice which costs P40 to P42 a kilo. The priciest, on the other hand, is Local Special Rice whose retail price is P54 to P62.
Since Sept. 5, the government, through Marcos’ Executive Order (EO) No 39, has been implementing the nationwide rice price ceiling amid the spike in prices of the country’s primary staple.
The EO No. 39 mandates the price ceiling for regular milled rice is P41 per kilo, while it is P45 per kilo of well-milled rice.
To recall, Marcos said during his campaign that he was aspiring to bring down the price of rice to P20 per kilo.