DTI sits on plea to study flour prices

The Department of Trade and Industry has yet to decide on a petition by bakers to evaluate current flour prices to help bring down bread prices.

Philippine Baking Industry Group president Walter Co said DTI officials met with his group, other bakers’ groups, and the Philippine Association of Flour Millers last June 3 to discuss where world wheat prices were going and how these movements would impact local flour prices.

Another meeting was supposed to be held two weeks after that, or on June 17, but none was scheduled.

Co declined to further comment on the matter, saying only that the DTI now wanted to meet with the bakers individually instead of as an industry group.

According to data from the United States Wheat Associates website, the price of hard wheat, which local millers use as a raw material for flour, went down to $476 per metric ton (MT) in June, from $497 per MT in May.

In May and June, however, flour prices were stable at P930 per 25-kilogram bag, data from DTI’s price monitoring showed.

Bakers lodged a petition with the DTI to direct millers to reveal their costs, citing a disconnect in the reflection of world wheat price movements in local flour prices.

Co said in an earlier interview that bakers might be forced to import some of its flour requirements if local millers continued to hold on to the current high price of P930 a bag.

Indonesian, Vietnamese and Turkish flour, meanwhile, cost just P800 a bag, including shipping expenses.