SRP mulled to rein in pork profiteering

The country should enforce a suggested retail price (SRP) on pork now being sold for as much as P420 per kilo, Agap Partylist Rep. Nicanor Briones said Sunday.

Briones, the chairperson of the House Committee on Cooperatives Development, said the SRP must be imposed to curtail profiteering considering the farmgate price of pork is only P220 per kilo.

“P400 is a bit high. If the [farmgate] price is P220, it should only increase by P120. So, kasim (pork shoulder) and lean pork should only be priced at P340 [while] liempo (pork belly) P380,” said Briones, who also heads the farmers’ group Pork Producers Federation of the Philippines.

Based on the latest price monitoring of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in Metro Manila markets, the retail price of liempo on Thursday varied from P340 to P420 per kilo, a slight increase from the previous P400 per kilo recorded last Monday, 20 May.

“That’s what we’ve been saying for a long time that we should put an SRP so that if it exceeds, we can ask [retailers] ‘why your sales are higher than the SRP?” Briones said.

“So that we can also determine who took advantage. Is it the retailers, traders, or farmers?” he added.

Setting an SRP will require a consensus between producers, traders and dealers in collaboration with the DA and the Department of Trade and Industry.

Agriculture Undersecretary for Livestock Deogracias Victor Savellano said last week that there is enough supply of pork and that the increase in its price was mainly influenced by unscrupulous traders who exploit the commodity, ultimately affecting the prices in the market.