Keep prices affordable during holiday season — Speaker
HOUSE Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez called on market vendors on Monday to keep the prices of food and other basic commodities affordable during the Christmas season.
“We appeal to retailers to follow the SRP (suggested retail price),” House Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez said in a statement. “Rice and other Noche Buena items should be affordable.”
The upcoming holidays are seen to help drive growth towards the end of the year, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said in October.
Gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 5.9% in the third quarter of the year from 4.3% in the second quarter, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority had shown.
“We want to make sure that traders do not take advantage of the holiday season to jack up prices of basic commodities,” Mr. Romualdez said.
Last month, the House approved a bill proposing to slap harsher penalties as well as lower the price limit for smuggling, hoarding, profiteering and cartelizing of agri-fishery and tobacco products to qualify as economic sabotage.
Headline inflation in October eased to 4.9% from 6.1% in October. Food inflation slowed to 7.1% from 10% in the previous month, as inflation in commodities like rice, vegetables, meat decreased.
“The House will continue to pass similar legislative measures to help the agricultural sector and support the prosperity agenda of President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Romualdez Marcos Jr.,” he said. — Beatriz Marie D. Cruz