A high-ranking government official said on Saturday that the government will import 22,000 metric tons of onions because farmgate prices are still too high.
“We discussed this during the DA’s Executive Committee (meeting). I presented the situation on the ground in Nueva Ecija and Tarlac. It was estimated that we need an estimated 22,000 metric tons (of onions),” Department of Agriculture deputy spokesperson Rex Estoperez said in a radio interview.
“We have no other option (except to import) as it is impossible to bring down the farmgate and retailer prices of onions,” Estoperez added.
He said that 25 percent (5,500 MT) of the total 22,000 MT of onions that the government will import would go to Visayas and Mindanao, and 50 percent (11,000 MT) would go to Luzon.
Estoperez said that the DA expects the imported onions to arrive by the end of January or the beginning of February 2023.
He explained that farmgate prices would continue to increase because mediators control the trade by getting the onion farmers to bid. He added that when they first got to Nueva Ecija, the farmgate price was only P280 per kilo, but after a while, it went up to P350 per kilo.
Also, Estoperez said that the prices “kept going up every hour.” He said that the price per kilogram reached P450 when they left the area, adding that they never saw a decline in the farmgate prices.
Estoperez said that the way the scheme works in real life is that a broker will talk to the onion farmers until the bidding is over, which is the only time the bulbs will be picked.
“The buyer usually taps a broker to approach the farmers. The agent calls the buyer and informs him that somebody had already approached him. The broker will negotiate at a higher bid until the deal is closed, and the farmer would ask for an advance payment before uprooting the crops,” Estoperez explained.
Estoperez said that people in other parts of the country, especially in the Visayas and Mindanao, had also heard about the high prices of onions.
He said that some of those in Bicol and several parts of Visayas and Mindanao have told the agriculture department that the price of onions reached P500 per kilo.