Onions put the Philippines in a stew over food price inflation
PUTTING quality over profit during inflationary times, Manila restaurant manager Ely Cundangan has refused to mess with her signature beef marrow stew; the same amount of onions must go in the pot, no matter what.
“Our ingredients have become so expensive that we are almost earning nothing. But we can’t change the recipe,” said 76-year-old Cundangan, taking a break from cooking to man the cash register. “Our customers will surely notice, and we want to keep our customers happy.”
Elected last June, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has struggled to fulfil campaign promises to bring down inflation, which hit 8.7 per cent in January. The rise was driven by an 11.2 per cent jump in food prices, the biggest since 2009.
Like the rest of the world, the Philippines is having to pay a lot more for energy imports. But it is the steepling prices of staple foodstuffs that have become most hard to stomach.
The cost of onions – a mainstay in almost all Philippine dishes – surged from around pesos 70 pesos (S$1.69) per kg in April last year to as much as 700 pesos in December, making them more expensive than meat.
Awkwardly for Marcos, who also holds the agriculture portfolio in the Philippines’ cabinet, the onion shortages stemmed largely from import delays. Imported onions, bought mostly from India and China, require sanitary and phytosanitary permits for quarantine and biosecurity purposes.
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Acknowledging that part of the fault lay with poor planning, Marcos acted to speed up imports. Prices have tumbled from December’s highs, but rates in a Manila wet market are still around double their year-ago levels.
“The price of onions is still like gold,” said Joey Reyes, a 52-year-old grocery store owner. She added that she was waiting for prices to come down a lot further before she started stocking onions again.
Consumer frustration is limited for now to social media memes, with some finding humour the best way to deal with hardship. A bride from Iloilo city became the talk of the town after she walked down the aisle with a bouquet of onions.
One enterprising florist in the capital sold bouquets festooned with onions and chillies for Valentine’s Day on Tuesday (Feb 14). “We wanted to have a different type of flower arrangement, especially since the prices of onions have gone up, and we’d like to join the trend,” Nhits Evangelista, the 25-year-old florist, told Reuters.
Earlier this month, a branch of Japan Home Centre, a popular chain of retail stores in Manila, accepted onions as payment for a day, promising to donate the onions to food banks for families unable to afford the staple.
But It is not just onions. Steep price rises for eggs and sugar have also whacked up the cost of putting food on the table.
Due to import delays and damage to crops from bad weather, the price of sugar has nearly doubled to 100 pesos per kg from a year ago, hitting food and beverage companies. Eggs, which cost 6 pesos each last year, are now selling at 10 pesos a piece as hatcheries are still reeling from outbreaks of avian flu.
Opposition politicians have criticised Marcos for not acting sooner to control spiralling prices, saying he should relinquish the agriculture portfolio and appoint a minister who can dedicate himself to the task. And farmers are worried that the belated surge in imports will end up weakening prices just as they take their own onions to market during the harvest season, which began this month.
Jon-Jon Taberna, a 41-year-old onion farmer from the Nueva Ecija province, said: “We are nervous. We will get nothing from what we have worked hard for. No matter how good the crop is, if prices are depressed, you won’t make money.”
Officials said the high inflation was transitory and would ease once supply issues were addressed. But January’s higher-than-anticipated inflation reading raised economists’ expectations that interest rates would rise further, after going up 350 basis points last year. Some said the official view on inflation could be too optimistic.
Economic growth in the Philippines is projected to slow sharply this year, after a forecast-beating 7.6 per cent rebound from the pandemic in 2022.
Robert Dan Roces, an economist at Security Bank, said: “The underlying drivers of inflation may be moving away from a transitory nature, and rather, the result of more persistent factors such as an unsolved food-supply problem which drives up costs.” REUTERS
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