Sunday, June 15, 2008 LGUs note slight, but steady price increases
MANDAUE City’s price monitoring body can only watch and record the rising cost of prime commodities, said assistant market administrator Rene Gascon.
Gascon said prices of meat products have been increasing since last April.
“Wa gyud sukad moubos ang presyo ani (Their prices have never gone down),” he said, referring to pork and chicken.
He said the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is the agency who should control the prices of these items.
He said that last month, an official from DTI met with city officials and told them to organize an inspection team. The team will be composed of officers from the City’s legal department, the police, the market administrator and DTI.
That was the last time Gascon heard of DTI. But his group is already monitoring the prices of goods daily.
He said his group is enforcing the law against vendors who don’t put price tags in their goods and who use defective weighing machines.
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A copy of their price monitoring report is sent to the mayor’s office while another copy is posted on a huge blackboard inside the market to guide consumers.
Based on their monitoring, prices of pork and chicken have increased since April at the rate of eight to 10 percent. From P140 a kilo, pork is now P150 a kilo. From P100 a kilo, chicken is P110.
Native chicken is still P170 per kilo.
The price of fish remains unstable. It is high when supply is low and cheap when it is abundant. Last Thursday Gascon was able to buy “budboron” fish at P70 per kilo.
Cooking oil per flat bottles (“lapad”) rose from P26 to P27.
The National Food Authority rice rose from P18.25 to P25 per kilo, with its Thailand-type variety.
The No. 16 corn that was once P35 to P36 per kilo is now P39.
With all prices going up, Gascon said one can still buy vegetables at P3 or P5. That’s already good for one meal.
No dramatic increase
Meanwhile, Lapu-Lapu City Administrator Teduolo Ybañez said he has not noticed any drastic increase in prices of basic commodities in his city.
Aside from the unstable prices of petroleum products, the prices of vegetables, fish and meat in the city is also influenced by the cost of transportation. Lapu-Lapu City, he said, as an island, does not have farm lots and relies most of its supply for fish from Cebu City.
Data from the public market office showed that increase in the prices of vegetables and meat hit at nine and 10 percent, respectively, starting last May.
“Dili nato malalis ang increase ani kay oil-driven man gud (We can’t go against the increase because this is oil-driven),” he said, adding that price increases of basic goods is corroborated by the soaring prices of construction materials, which prompted the lowest bidder of the proposed P1.5 million new police station in Barangay Poblacion to ask for a delay in awarding the project.
Ybañez, who chairs the local price monitoring council and the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC), said other projects due for implementation this year by the city has also been stalled by the winning bidders appeal to withhold the awarding.
He said that the most painful reality to watch amid the current crisis is the long line of people buying a kilo of rice from a distribution of the National Food Authority (NFA) at the public market in Barangay Poblacion and in the city’s sports complex near the City Hall building.
He said in their weekly inspection in public markets and in department stores prices of every item is moved in a “humane” level to reciprocate the increase in petroleum products. (OCP/AIV)
