Onion imports coming—Ruffy Biazon

Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Expect cheap white and yellow onions to flood the market shortly as both the Bureau of Customs and the Bureau of Plant Industry have issued the necessary import permits and clearances to ease a current shortage.

A statement issued by the Bureau of Customs said the onions will come from China, India, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

Since August 10, the government has been issuing importation and plant quarantine clearances to onion traders to “address the current shortage of the commodity in the local market,” said the statement.

“We shall not allow unscrupulous traders to take advantage of the white and yellow onion shortage by raising the price of this basic commodity,” Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon said in the statement. “We shall facilitate the immediate release of these importations to help stabilize the supply and price of yellow and white onions in the market.”

For his part, BPI Director Clarito Barron said “import permits shall be issued only to currently accredited onion importers,” who are required to submit original copies of purchase orders from their institutional buyers, like manufacturing companies, food commissaries or hotel chains, as well as copies of the sales contract with foreign suppliers.

The BPI earlier reported that as of July 27, 2012, the country’s inventory of white and yellow onions was “placed at zero,” causing the prices of the agricultural products to shoot up from P65 to as much as P80 to P100 per kilo.

Upon the recommendation of the National Onion Action Team, the country’s confederation of onion growers issued a resolution calling for the importation of the commodity. It added, however, that the importation “shall be allowed only until the end of October this year.”

In mid-July, leaders of the Vegetable Importers and Exporters Association (VIEA) met with agriculture department officials to report the shortage of “white granex” onions in the local market. They requested to import  21,000 metric tons of white onions for the July-to-December period, noting “demand traditionally increases during the Yuletide season.”

Late last year, some 3,800 metric tons of white onions from China and the Netherlands arrived in Manila to augment the local inventory of red creole onions.

The government had not allowed onion importation since 2010 to encourage local farmers to increase production and curb smuggling of the agricultural product.