Amid high market prices for staple goods such as onions, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has repeated his campaign promise of bringing the cost of rice down to PHP20 a kilo and said the country was getting “closer and closer” to this dream.
Marcos Jr, who also sits as agriculture chief, made the statement during a visit to a Kadiwa ng Pasko store in Quezon City, one of the 12 stores across the country under the Kadiwa ng Pasko program that seeks to provide people with commodities at significantly lower rates than the prevailing market prices.
“We are getting closer and closer to my dream price for rice, especially, because we are able to sell [a kilo of rice] for PHP25,” Marcos said.
It’s an apparent change of tune for the president, who said only in September that the country had “a long road” ahead of it before the country brings down the retail price of rice to PHP20 a kilo.
The latest price monitoring data from the Department of Agriculture shows that rice is currently sold at PHP38 to PHP50 a kilo (US$0.68 to US$0.89) in the city markets. Meanwhile, stores under the Kadiwa program can sell rice at lower prices as these are sourced from the National Food Authority’s buffer stock, usually reserved for calamities or disasters.
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