DA-WV equips LGU counterparts for Bantay Presyo monitoring activities

Aiming to reactivate the Bantay Presyo Committees in every municipality, the Department of Agriculture (DA) Western Visayas, through its Agribusiness Industry Support Unit, conducted a two-day seminar on Regional Bantay Presyo Monitoring among municipal agriculturists, agricultural technicians, and report officers on Nov 17 to 18, 2021 in Iloilo City.

The Agribusiness and Marketing Assistance Division (AMAD), as the secretariat of the Regional Bantay Presyo Monitoring Team, is mandated to regularly monitor the regional agricultural commodity prices as required by DA Implementing Rules and Regulation for Republic Act 7581 (Price Act of 1992).

AMAD periodically collects data on essential and prime agricultural commodities to analyze market trends, enforce the suggested retail price (SRP) policy, and monitor hoarders, profiteers, and cartels.

“We are all consumers, and we want to make sure that prime agricultural commodities in the market are not overpriced that people could no longer afford. We enforce the Price Act, especially during calamities. The beauty of regularly monitoring the prices is not just for calamity interventions, but it also gives us the idea of the supply gap in certain areas. Our target is to institutionalize our price monitoring system because you can create some mechanism on how to solve the problem [on agricultural commodities] that will arise in the community,” said May Ann Grajo, DA-WV AMAD Supervising Agriculturist.

AMAD encourages the participants to lobby to their local chief executives to support the strengthening or reactivation of the existing price monitoring team and create areas that do not yet have one.

This price monitoring team shall warn hoarders, traders, and retailers that the government is serious about apprehending and filing cases against them if they continue to take advantage of the market prices and some declaration of a state of emergencies.

Resource Speaker Atty. Purita Monica Ann San Diego-Heria explained that RA 7581 would penalize unscrupulous hoarders and traders for manipulating the consumers. The Price Act works on stabilizing the commodities and prescribing measures for unjustifiable increases in prices.

Any person who violates the Automatic Price Control or Mandated Price Ceiling may be imprisoned for a period of not less than one year nor more than ten years, or a fine of note less than P5,000 nor P1,000,000, or both, at the discretion of the court.

“Bantay Presyo Monitoring Team (BPMT) must be informed of the justified reason of such abnormal hike of prices, we can address the issues and may control complaints. The purpose of our BPMT is to find out if there is a selfish purpose of increasing prices or there are other factors to be considered,” Heria said.

Meanwhile, Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA) Region VI Supervising Agriculturist Mr. Noel Negre discussed the FPA price monitoring activity and the factors affecting the fertilizer price increase.

According to Negre, the increase in fertilizer prices can be attributed to the rise in the importation demand of fertilizers in countries like the US, Brazil, India, and Australia. Higher input costs have bolstered fertilizer prices.

The cost for phosphates raw material costs, particularly sulfur and ammonia, have increased sharply due to COVID-19 restrictions on transport that caused limited input supplies but higher demand. Due to frigid weather, urea feedstock costs have also risen, including natural gas prices in early 2021.

“The price hike is attributed to liberalization of fertilizer; the country as a net importer of fertilizers; strengthened global fertilizer demand; increased prices of raw materials; and increase transportation and logistical cost,” Negre reported.

This reality of the rising fertilizer prices saddened the participants but expressed support for the proposed interventions of the One DA approach to combat the increase of fertilizer costs.

These include increasing farmers’ fertilizer subsidies, encouraging farmers’ federations and associations to import fertilizers, providing soft loan assistance, introducing a price guide indicator, constant monitoring and surveillance on stock inventory and local pricing, strengthening awareness campaigns, and promoting a balanced fertilizer strategy.

Negre called for the vigilance of the participants to report unscrupulous sellers and unregistered fertilizer products in the region. (MCMBuala/DA-RAFIS 6)