The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources is confident that bangus prices can plunge to as much as P50 per kilo.

According to BFAR spokesperson Nazario Briguera, bangus market prices can decline if good domestic production is maintained, and to ensure a stable local harvest, the government needs to increase the supply of fingerlings.

“We have a National Food Stock Development Program where we increase the number of inahing bangus and inahing tilapia so that we can have more supply of their semen,” he said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Senator and Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food chairman Cynthia Villar said lowering bangus prices depends on the Department of Agriculture's developmental plans.

“It's easy to say that your aim is this one. Are you doing something to achieve it?” she said. “Just like the P20 rice, we know that to produce that, we have to have a developmental plan; we have to mechanize and teach them how to make better seeds so that their productivity will increase…we have to train them.”

Based on DA’s price monitoring on Monday, retail prices of freshwater fish in Metro Manila markets have increased up to P30 per kilo, where bangus is now at P150 to P250 per kilo, higher compared to the registered amount of P150 to P220 on 15 January.

Tilapia prices are now at P110 to P170 per kilo, an increase from P110 to P160 on the same date.

Indian mackerel, or alumahan, is now P300 to P360 per kilo, which was in the P280 to P360 price range for the last two weeks.

Earlier, the DA expressed its target of bringing back bangus prices to P50 to P70 per kilo. With this, the Laguna Lake Development Authority said it will open over 1,000 hectares of unutilized areas of Laguna de Bay in the coming months to expand its aquaculture business and secure bigger fish harvests to lower its prices.