DTI exec says too soon for bakers to raise bread prices

But Philippine Baking Industry Group (PhilBaking) president Walter Co insisted the only way to avoid raising the prices by P3 per unit of Pinoy Tasty and P1.5 per Pinoy Pandesal was to put off the implementation of a 20-percent safeguard tariff on imported flour.

Price of ‘Pinoy Tasty,’ pandesal to go up later this August

In separate interviews over Radyo Inquirer 990AM, Maglaya and Co explained how the safeguard tariff on imported flour could affect the prices of Pinoy Tasty and Pinoy Pandesal.

Maglaya said that bakers mix 70 percent of Turkish flour with 30 percent of locally-milled flour.

With the 20-percent safeguard tariff in place, Co maintained that bakers would have to increase the price of the baked goods by August 20.

“We bakers always look into ways to avoid an increase in the prices of Pinoy Tasty and Pinoy Pandesal because doing this will affect the demand for the said goods. But if we cannot buy imported flour, we will need to use locally-milled flour which is more expensive than Turkish flour,” he said.

Co said that one way to avert the price movement was to postpone the implementation of the 20-percent safeguard tariff on imported flour until January.

Bakers’ observations were that they were not able to bake Pinoy Tasty and Pinoy Pandesal of the same quality when they use 50 percent of locally-milled flour in their mixture, said Maglaya.

“They say that they cannot bake well with local flour and we will look into that. If they indeed have to increase the prices of Pinoy Tasty and Pinoy Pandesal, the price increase should at least be reasonable,” said the DTI official.