Cynthia Villar hits resurgence of garlic cartel

MANILA, Philippines - The garlic cartel is back and is again reducing farmers’ income and weakening the economy.

Sen. Cynthia Villar, chair of the Senate agriculture committee, said the resurgence of the cartel involves government officials and businessmen cornering the importation of garlic and controlling the supply.         

Villar expressed dismay over the practice by officials of the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) under the Department of Agriculture (DA) to issue import permits to traders who do not really bring in the needed volume of garlic into the country.

“I told them to penalize traders who ask for import permits but do not import garlic to destroy the law of supply and demand. They should realize that we should be relying on importations,” Villar told reporters after the hearing.

She said traders applied and were granted permits to import 57,000 metric tons of garlic last year but they only brought in 12,000 MT and jacked up prices.

The senator said the importers appear to have intentionally reduced their imports to create a shortage of garlic supply and justify price increases.

She added that the BPI has not helped local garlic farmers whose production volume plunged by half since 2001.

“What is the BPI doing? What happened to our high-value crop programs, which are supposed to increase the production of certain commodities? Instead, our production is going down,” Villar said.

She cited a 2014 government finding of the existence of a garlic cartel that was supposed to have been dismantled the following year.

Villar said based on her initial study, a P100 per kilo price of garlic is “reasonable.”

“(But) if the price per kilo of garlic reaches P200 to P300, there’s surely price manipulation,” she said.