House may recommend importing onions

THE HOUSE of Representatives may be poised to recommend the importation of onions in a bid to lower domestic prices of the essential cooking bulbs, a congressman said on Monday.

In a statement, Party-list Rep. Erwin T. Tulfo said importing onions would foil the potential hoarding of onion supplies by local traders who want to artificially inflate market prices of the produce.

“We are closely monitoring the situation of local onion farmers, who are being exploited by traders in their wholesale buying of produce at unjustifiably low prices,” Mr. Tulfo said in Filipino.

Farmers are reportedly forced to sell their onion harvests at a loss of P20 per kilo, P5 short of its original cost of production.

Raul Q. Montemayor, national manager of the Federation of Free Farmers, said the government should also go after onion hoarders as they intentionally cause price spikes.

“Also look into hoarding because a large portion of newly harvested stocks are put into cold storages and sometimes deliberately withheld from the market to create artificial shortages and price spikes,” he told BusinessWorld in a Viber message.

“It seems like hoarders are just looking to let the issue die down first before they start buying and stockpiling onions again, just for them to sell at a higher price point later on,” Mr. Tulfo said.

“We have no problem importing onion produce, as long as it doesn’t enter while we still have enough local stocks,” Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura Executive Director Jayson H. Cainglet told BusinessWorld in Filipino through a Viber message.

But he said the government should deplete the country’s onion stocks first before letting imported onion enter the market.

Commenting on low farmgate prices, Mr. Cainglet said: “The farmgate price for onions is low because there are a lot of smuggled onions in the market.”

Smuggled onions are often sold cheaper, forcing farmers to lower farmgate prices to be competitive.

Mr. Cainglet recommended that the government address smuggling to offer local farmers relief. “Next harvest (season), it is important to ensure that there are no imported or smuggled products in the market,” he said in Filipino.

The average retail price of onions ranges from P80 to P93 pesos per kilo, according to the latest price monitoring bulletin by the Department of Agriculture. — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio