The government is targeting to hike the share of local garlic production to the country’s total supply from the current 8 percent to as much as 40 percent over the next three years, according to the chief of Department of Agriculture (DA).
“Today I have ordered the start of a National Garlic Development Program (NGDP), wherein we will plant garlic and will make sure prices of garlic produced locally—to be assisted by the Department of Agriculture—will be competitive with those imported and we will produce enough to stabilize the price in the market,” Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said in an interview with reporters on May 29.
“Our target easily is if we currently produce only 8 percent of the total supply, then our initial target would be to [increase it to] 30 [percent] to 40 percent within two to three years time,” Piñol added.
Piñol made the pronouncement following the P50 increase in the retail price of both native and imported garlic in the market and after the DA conducted series of inspection on warehouses to determine if there were hoarding of the commodity.
The DA chief blamed the importers for the hike in the retail price of the garlic, saying they “manipulated” the price for the sake of profitability.
“How can I say that we are being played by importers? Here’s the latest price survey in the market: P180 in supermarket, P200 in Pasig, P240 in Balintawak and I just talked to the governor of Batanes and he said garlic there is being sold at P60,” Piñol said.
“This means if the farmers in Batanes could produce at P60 and make money, we can also produce garlic in Mindoro, in Ilocos, in Mindanao and even in the Visayas. I don’t see any reason we can’t plant garlic,” he added.
Piñol also said it is a wrong policy for the country to be dependent on imports to supply its garlic requirement, as importers could have the upper hand in controlling price of the commodity in the local market.
“We were made to believe with what they’ve been saying for so long that we shouldn’t anymore plant garlic [and] we [cannot] compete against China and India. It was foolish of me to believe this, and look what happened now,” he said.
“Importers are playing with us. Now, our attitude is to start a National Garlic Developt Program, which will produce sizable volume of garlic to make sure that in times like this, when importers are manipulating prices, the government can come in and stabilize the price in the market,” he added.
The Philippines’s local garlic production only supplies 8 percent of the total demand, with the bulk being filled up by imports, which are mostly sourced from China and India.
The Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), an attached agency of the DA, approved 1,143 sanitary phytosanitary-import clearances covering the importation of 57,150 metric tons (MT) of garlic from January to May.
However, as of May 25, only 12,440.34 MT have been brought in by private garlic importers to the country, BPI data showed. Of the 12,440.37 MT imported from January to May this year, 12,206.86 MT were bought from China, according to BPI data. The remaining volume was purchased from India.
Under the NGDP, Piñol said the DA will embark on a massive garlic planting across identified areas in the country and even considering military camps as viable lands for expansion.
“There is Fort Magsaysay which has 40,000 hectares in Nueva Ecija. We can plant onion and garlic in all military camps. Besides, the planting of garlic is just fast, in a year time we can already harvest,” he said.
“So if we can start doing this now, by next year we will no longer suffer the problems we’re suffering right now,” he added.
Under the NGDP, the DA will also provide modern garlic planting technologies to local farmers to improve their productivity, according to Piñol.
In 2016 the Philippines’s garlic production declined by 28.31 percent to 7,470 MT, from 10,419.52 MT recorded output in 2015, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.