Senator Imee Marcos has stepped in to increase the supply of onions that can be sold at P170 per kilo in Kadiwa outlets and rolling stores.
Marcos called “pointless” the Department of Agriculture’s (DA’s) plan to raise the suggested retail price (SRP) of onions to control runaway prices that reached P720 per kilo recently.
The DA should instead tap a neglected source of funding, the veteran legislator said, to expedite the harvest and direct purchase of locally grown onions for delivery to Metro Manila.
“Activate the P140-million fund from the 2021 budget, which was realigned for the DA’s Food Mobilization Program this year,” the seasoned lawmaker pointed out.
“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.”
“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,” the lady senator added.
Marcos, who chairs the Senate Committee on Cooperatives, recently initiated the direct purchase of up to 300,000 kilos of onions from Nueva Ecija farmers’ cooperatives whose grants she had sponsored from the DA’s Kadiwa program.
She also contacted Metro Manila mayors to add Kadiwa outlets in wet markets and to map out the routes for Kadiwa rolling stores.
“The mayors of Las Piñas, Mandaluyong, Quezon City, Manila, Makati, and Valenzuela have confirmed their support. I am confident that more onions can be sold at Kadiwa prices,” Marcos said.
Onion harvests will continue until February in Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Pangasinan, Batanes, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Tarlac, and Oriental Mindoro.
“A strategy for their purchase and delivery should already be ironed out.”
“A strategy for their purchase and delivery should already be ironed out,” she said.
“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,” Marcos concluded.
