Prices stable despite pork, cement spikes

The National Price Coordinating Council (NPCC) will ask pork and cement producers to explain high prices despite the stable cost of other commodities.

At a press conference on Monday, the NPCC said retail prices for both pork and cement have gone over the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) suggested retail price levels.

“We spoke with pork producers and they said they can remedy the situation. There are a lot of points of view. Some are saying importation is down. Some say consumption is up,” DTI Secretary Gregory Domingo said.

He said the average price for a kilo of pork went up to P190 last January, up from P180 the year before, or a difference of 5.55 percent.

Agriculture department spokesperson Salvador Salacup admitted that supply pressure may be coming from the government’s stricter accreditation process for where the country gets its imported pork.

He said the stricter accreditation process was borne out of the need to keep the food imported by the Philippines disease-free.

“We have to work on it properly. We want to work on the safety angles of this,” Salacup said, noting that the country remains food-and-mouth disease and bird flu free and that the government would like to keep it that way.

Meanwhile, DTI Undersecretary Zenaida Maglaya said the government would look into the unexplained rise in the price of cement.

She said one company, Rizal Cement, now sells for as much as P225 per 40-kilogram bag. This was higher than the company’s own price of P190 per bag last year. Holcim Philippines sells cement for P216 per bag (up from P195 before) and Republic Cement sells for P220 (up from P205 last year).

“They have to explain this, but we want to wait,” Maglaya said, while conceding that producers may be incurring higher costs due to the more expensive coal. Coal makes up as much as 25 percent of the production cost for cement makers, Maglaya said.

Despite the more expensive price of cement and pork, the NPCC said other commodities remained stable, with price changes all within reasonable levels.

Domingo said the prices of products like milk, noodles and fuel went up 3 percent from last year, tracking the country’s annual inflation rate.