Retailers to comply with rice price cap for 1 week

MANILA, Philippines — Rice retailers will comply with Executive Order No. 39 for one week and will decide on their move on the price ceiling mandating P41 and P45 per kilo of rice, rice retailers’ group Grains Retailers Confederation of the Philippines (GRECON) said on Friday.

“The response of the retailers was positive. They will follow, support (the price ceiling) but until when the retailers can provide help? I told them, let’s comply and after a week, if we cannot really afford (to shoulder the losses), we will convey to the government that this is what we can afford,” GRECON national president James Magbanua said in a radio interview.

During the consultation, Philippine Rice Industry Stakeholders Movement co-founder and GRECON national spokesman Orly Manuntag said that a retailer will lose at least P49,000 in just one week of the implementation of price cap.

Magbanua also supported the position of Manuntag that a retailer loses P5 per kilo of well-milled rice sold at P45 per kilo. He added that rice retailers would monitor the actual happening on the ground before they meet again for their next action. — Bella Cariaso, Sheila Crisostomo