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THE
reduction in the supply of available locally grown
onions pushed prices up at both the wholesale and the
retail level, the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics
(BAS) said.
BAS, an
attached agency of the Department of Agriculture, noted
that the yellow granex variant was already out of the
bodegas in Divisoria and the available white onions were
mostly imported.
The
white variety was sold at the retail outlets at P70 per
kilogram, a level recorded during the previous month.
As for
the red variety, BAS said a P5 increase was recorded at
wholesale for Red Creole. At retail, the asking price
for the red variant is now at P90 per kilogram, or P10
higher than the asking price a week ago.
The
usual peak harvest season for onions is from March to
April while the lean season is from June to December.
Earlier,
local wholesalers of onion have asked the Philippine
government to hold off the importation of the produce
until November.
Alfredo
Lim Jr., a wholesaler of onion in Manila, said that as
of May, there are already 2.1 million bags of yellow and
red onions already in storage facilities and that the
volume will be enough for the needs of end-users until
November.
Yellow
onions are usually consumed by institutional users such
as restaurants, while red onions are usually consumed by
households.
Lim,
however, conceded earlier that the available supply of
onion is lower as local farmers suffered a 45-percent
decline in production due to the La Niña weather
phenomenon.
“The
rains adversely affected onion farms. Between December
to January, farmers were already losing some 20 percent
to 30 percent of their production due to the rains,” he
said.
The
Philippines resorts to importing onions from countries
such as China to plug the gap between available supply
and local demand. |
