Rice trader warns of soaring prices

A rice retailer yesterday expressed concern on the recent increases in the prices of basic commodities, especially rice and corn, and warned that they could still go up more in the coming months.

Erwin Gok-ong, president of the Cebu Market Vendors Cooperative, said the soaring price of commercial rice in the local market is the effect of high price of price in the world market and lack of local production.

Gok-ong, a councilman of barangay Ermita in Cebu City, said local rice retailers like them foresee that a kilo of rice will go up to as much as more than P40 in a few months.

“Our suppliers said the price of rice will still continue to go up in the coming weeks. There is no crisis in rice supply, only that its price is high,” he said.

He cited that in his store, he is selling three kinds of rice—ganador rice at P34 per kilo, NFA rice at P18.25 a kilo and rose brand, which is imported from Thailand, at P32 a kilo.

Early last month, Gok-ong said that ganador rice was sold at P28 per kilo and rose brand was at P25 per kilo. NFA rice’s price remains stable because it is subsidized by the government.

Aside from rice, corn’s price has also gone up by almost 100 percent. Last month, Gok-ong said that a kilo of milled corn was sold at P18 but it jumped up to P32 per kilo this month.

Gok-ong said they source their rice supply from Manila and their corn from Mindanao. “Naa man production sa mais dinhi sa Cebu pero insakto ra para konsumo sa mga farmers,” he said.

He said his suppliers told him that there is low corn production in Mindanao because the farmers there now prefer to plant bananas and pineapple because they have an immediate buyer.

“My suppliers said it is now last season of rice harvest so it is expected that there will be less rice production locally and the price will surely go up,” Gok-ong said.

He said that even the National Food Authority is regulating the rice that it supplies to its accredited stores, adding that instead of 50, the NFA now only delivers 20 bags of NFA rice to them.

During her visit to Cebu the other day, President Gloria Arroyo urged Cebuanos to be vigilant and help monitor the prices of fuel and rice.

Arroyo said the people should help the local government monitor the price of rice and basic commodities to make sure that they did not exceed the price listed by the Department of Trade and Industry. — Wenna A. Berondo/LPM