Price of pan de sal to go down to P1.50

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Baking Industry Group (Philbaking) announced that the price of regular pan de sal would go down from P2 to P1.50 in neighborhood bakeshops after local bakers started using cheaper flour imported from Turkey.

Newly elected Philbaking president Walter Co said that the cheaper flour would allow small community bakeries to offer a 20- to 25-gram pan de sal for only P1.50. The standard weight is 20 grams.

Co said not all bakers use Turkish flour because of its lower protein content but its price ranges from P660 to P670 per sack compared to local flour that costs P790 to P800 per sack and Australian flour that costs P775 per sack.

He said Philbaking members are still using local flour for loaf bread because Turkish flour can cause discoloration.

Co clarified that bakers could roll back the price of loaf bread by as much as P2 if local flour millers decrease their price.

“We hope flour millers could still decrease their prices to P740 to P750, which would result to a P1 reduction in the price of loaf bread,” Co said.

He said if flour millers could cut prices to P700 per sack, the price of loaf bread would go down by as much as P2 per loaf. The current price of loaf bread ranges from P50 to P53.50.

Co hopes the flour millers would not raise prices during the Christmas season when prices of commodities usually increase.

“We hope this isn’t so because according to them they (millers) have three months worth of inventory,” Co noted.

He said the bakers would continue their dialogue with flour millers in order to bring down the price of flour.

The bakers are coordinating with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to make bread more affordable to the public.

Co said another way to help lower the price of bread is the removal of the 7 percent tariff on imported flour.

Ric Pinca, executive director of the Philippine Association of Flour Millers (Pafmil), said they are not in favor of this because imported flour from Australia, Turkey and Russia is already very cheap.

“It is obvious that some of these imports are subsidized. Industrialized countries are notorious for providing subsidies despite the World Trade Organization’s ban on the unfair trade practice,” Pinca said in a statement.

He said reducing the seven percent tariff on imported flour would only render domestic millers uncompetitive since they are not getting any subsidy from the government.