THE government-run Food Terminal, Inc. (FTI) has signed a hog supply deal with the Philippine arm of Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Foods PLC (CP Foods) to help stabilize pork prices in Metro Manila, as the government struggles to enforce its suggested price caps on the commodity.
A memorandum of agreement signed by FTI President Joseph Lo and CP Foods Chief Operating Officer Nattakorn Sujipittham calls for CP Foods to initially supply 100 live hogs each day at a discount.
The hogs will be sent directly to a slaughterhouse in Caloocan.
The hogs will then be processed into carcass form, for delivery to various wet markets.
“This partnership aims to stabilize pork prices in Metro Manila, where consumers have been grappling with rising food costs,” the Department of Agriculture (DA) said in a statement.
CP Foods was deemed to be capable of supplying the volume needed for the pilot, it added.
“We needed a company that can guarantee the volume we need at the price we were looking at to achieve our goals.”
CP Foods, a leading integrated agro-industrial and food company, in November announced a P10-billion plan to build 20 new breeding farms to help increase pork production.
The DA on March 10 imposed a maximum suggested retail price for pork of P300 per kilo for fresh carcasses, P350 for kasim (shoulder) and pigue (leg), and P380 for liempo (belly).
“Compliance with the MSRP on pork has remained low,” the DA said, with dealers giving various reasons for breaching the price ceiling,” the DA said.
The level of compliance with the pork MSRP was about 30%, according to a survey of 170 stalls monitored by the authorities, the DA has said.
The Philippine Statistics Authority reported that the price of fresh liempo in the March 1-5 period rose to P384.08 per kilo from P378.84 in the previous monitoring period of Feb. 15-17 and P375.02 a month earlier. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza