MANILA, Philippines — The price of onion, which hit P700 per kilo, will go down to as low as P50 “soon,” Albay Rep. Joey Salceda said yesterday.
“I think everything will normalize. There is a reversion and it will go back to P50. You can cut all my five fingers if it doesn’t go back to P50,” he said in a television interview.
Salceda said onion prices are “already defying the laws of gravity,” hence their eventual drop to P50 “natural price” soon.
He said there is a “cartel” of traders hoarding onions, thus limiting supply in the market and pushing prices.
“There are seven (cartels) but I don’t want (to discuss them), but of course we are doing our own research. You go to Subic (Freeport), I can tell you there are about 50 containers filled with onions there,” he said.
The lawmaker claimed onions are being delivered “little by little” to the market.
“What essentially they did was ‘predatory pricing’ so they came in, brought the prices down, killed the local Filipino farmers and now they control the supply,” he added.