The Department of Agriculture (DA) may sell subsidized pork at Kadiwa rolling stores nationwide to support the implementation of a maximum suggested retail price (MSRP) for the commodity in March.
DA assistant secretary Arnel de Mesa said in an interview yesterday that the plan is under study to find out whether it can help in pulling down the meat’s retail prices.
“Similar to rice when we introduced the rice-for-all (RFA) program, [here,] we are also looking at the possibility that DA could intervene, possibly for pork but the details are not yet firm,” de Mesa said.
Under the RFA program, the DA facilitates the sale of subsidized rice stocks.
The DA official was also asked from where the pork supply will come, but he said the details are yet to be finalized
Earlier, the DA said the MSRP was necessary to address an excessive gap between farmgate and retail prices since the current retail price of pork at P400 per kg or higher is “unreasonable.”
The MSRP is also expected to curb profiteering, especially since the current farmgate prices of hogs range from P240 to P250 per kg, the DA said.
Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. recently said the pork MSRP is yet to be decided but stressed his department sought to ensure it obtained enough data to avoid negative effects on the sector.
The DA said the final decision on the pork MSRP will be dependent on their “level of comfort” with the data and information that they can gather.
Based on DA’s monitoring of public markets in the National Capital Region on Saturday, the prevailing price of pork ham ranged from P350 to P420 per kg; pork belly from P380 to P480 per kg; frozen kasim from P230 to P290 per kg; frozen liempo from P290 to P350.
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that hog production in the fourth quarter of 2024 fell by 7.3 percent to 447.21 metric tons (MT) from 482.32 MT.
Meanwhile, data from the Bureau of Animal Industry showed that pork comprised the bulk of meat imported by the Philippines from January to November 2024 at 671.56 million kg, or 50.4 percent of the total for the period.
Pork import for the period was also 21.9 percent higher, at 550.54 million kilos, compared with that in the same period of 2023.
