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February 18, 2025 | 12:00am
Vendors attended to their customers buying various food items from their stalls inside the Commonwealth Market in Quezon City on November 22, 2024.
STAR / Miguel De Guzman
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Agriculture (DA) is seeking to revise the definition of profiteering in existing laws in order to provide it with the power to curtail unscrupulous wholesalers and retailers of commodities in the market.
Agriculture officials said the department’s hands had been tied in addressing profiteering in the market, forcing it to be more creative in intervening and resolving the matter.
DA Undersecretary Asis Perez, in an earlier hearing conducted by the House of the Representatives, said the DA cannot just act on profiteering since its legal definition is quite different from its economic concept.
Perez pointed out that for a situation to be considered profiteering, the price of the commodity must increase by 10 percent from its previous month’s average price in line with the definition stipulated under Republic Act 7581 or the Price Act. This, Perez emphasized, is quite different to what is happening to rice prices in the market.
“We are not talking about rice prices increasing but we are talking about prices not going down as expected,” he told the House committee.
“The law is worded differently so that we cannot just act on it,” he added.
House committee on agriculture and food chairperson Rep. Wilfrido Mark Enverga expressed openness to the issue raised by the DA, pointing out that there might be a need to “amend” the Price Act.
“We have to address this,” Enverga said.
Sources said the DA is now busy drafting multiple proposed amendments to existing legislations, including the Price Act, that would empower it to address market challenges like profiteering.
Under the Price Act, profiteering is defined as the sale of any commodity at a “price grossly in excess of its true worth.”
The law stipulates that a price of a commodity is “deemed grossly in excess of its true worth” if it has been raised by more than 10 percent in the immediately preceding month.
The issue of profiteering has been raised multiple times since President Marcos reduced the tariff on imported rice from 35 percent to 15 percent as prevailing retail prices remained elevated.
Various industry players claimed there is profiteering across the rice value chain that keeps retail prices of rice not going down as expected.
The average price of rice since July 2024 has been on a downward trend albeit at a turtle pace, based on Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data.
The average price of well-milled rice, for example, has been continuously declining from P55.85 per kilo in July last year to P54.14 per kilo in January, PSA data showed.
In fact, no less than Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. noted that there could be a possible profiteering in the sale of imported rice since some stocks were being sold earlier this year as high as P60 per kilo.
Tiu Laurel argued that based on the DA’s computations that the price of imported rice should not hit that price level.
Because of this, the agriculture chief himself thinks the definition of profiteering under the law must be expanded. For imported rice, Tiu Laurel told The STAR that a profit margin higher than P10 across the value chain must be considered profiteering.
He explained that the retail price of imported rice in the market must be equivalent to its landed cost plus any pertinent taxes and a margin of P8 to P10 pesos spread across the value chain.
Citing consultations with industry players, Tiu Laurel said retailers are okay with a P4 to P5 per kilo margin while importers are okay with a P2 per kilo profit with the remaining profit of P3 to P4 per kilo going to traders.
