Senator Imee Marcos on Thursday urged the Department of Agriculture to realign a P140-million fund allocated last year to ease the presently soaring prices of onion.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s elder sister, in a statement, said the DA, whom the Chief Executive heads, must tap the "neglected source of funding" to expedite the harvest and direct purchase of locally grown onions for delivery to Metro Manila.

Senator Marcos, who chairs the Senate Committee on Cooperatives, said the P140 million had been realigned with the DA Food Mobilization Program this year.

She slammed the DA's plan to raise the suggested retail price of red onions to control runaway prices that have reached P720 per kilo.

"Raising the SRP for onions from P170 to P250 per kilo only invites more ridicule, with market prices now more than four times the present SRP," she said.

Imee, on Wednesday, initiated the direct purchase of up to 300,000 kilograms of onions from Nueva Ecija farmers' cooperatives whose grants she sponsored from the DA's Kadiwa program.

On the same day, she also contacted Metro Manila mayors to add Kadiwa outlets in wet markets and map out the routes for Kadiwa rolling stores.

So far, Imee said she had gained the support of the local governments of Las Piñas, Mandaluyong, Quezon City, Manila, Makati and Valenzuela.

"I am confident that more onions can be sold at Kadiwa prices on 30 and 31 December," the senator said.

She said the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Pangasinan, Batanes, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Tarlac and Oriental Mindoro will continue their onion harvests until February.

"A strategy for their purchase and delivery should already be ironed out. Down the road, a more efficient system of monitoring agricultural output must be put in place, or we will always be at the mercy of hoarders and smugglers in cahoots with corrupt officials at the DA," she added.