MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Baking
Industry Group, Inc. on Tuesday said it would reduce the price of Pinoy
Pandesal by P1 on April 10 as bakeries turn to the cheaper Indonesian flour to
make the breakfast staple.
“The 4-percent
price reduction of Pinoy Pandesal is made possible with the use of imported
Indonesian flour currently priced at P840/bag, which is 8 percent lower than
the prevailing price of locally-milled flour at P910/bag,” Simplicio Umali Jr.,
Philbaking president, said.
The current price
of a 10-piece pack Pinoy Pandesal is P25.
Umali said that
Indonesian flour millers used US wheat in their production of their premium
hard bread flour. Bakeries now mostly use Indonesian Flour to make pandesal.
Pinoy Tasty, on the
other hand, is made using locally-milled premium hard flour, which has only
gone down by P10.00/25kg bag this year.
This P10-reduction
in local flour, however, is not enough to bring down the cost of Pinoy Tasty
since the prices of other raw ingredients like refined sugar increased.
Based on the US
Wheat weekly price report, wheat is now being sold for $364/metric ton (MT), 28
percent less than the March 2011 price of $504/MT.
World wheat
production is also up by 6 percent from 652 million MT (MMT) last year to
694/MMT.
Given the positive
global wheat scenario, bakers anticipate that local flour prices will decrease
in the coming months.
“Should the local
flour millers be able to reduce their flour by P40.00/bag, then we can expect
some downward adjustment to the retail price of Pinoy Tasty,” Walter Co,
PhilBaking director, said.
Bakers assured
Filipino consumers that should local flour prices go down, Pinoy Tasty and
Pinoy Pandesal prices will be adjusted accordingly.
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Aside from fuel industry, food and beverage
manufacturer is also experiencing global crisis especially those which are
located here in Philippines. In fact, if we are going to analyze the current
situation specifically in baking industry, there is a current problem in
continuous increasing prices of raw materials needed to create pan – de – sal.
What are these raw ingredients? These are oils, flour, sugar and so forth. Like
what other say, we should appreciate first our country’s own product. This is
the reason why lots of local bakeries depend on the raw materials that can be
supplied on various local products. However, due to scarcity, a problem occurs
when it comes to pricing. There is a small supply for a large population’s
demand. To compensate, raw products has been forcedly increased their prices
and this became a source of problem. Moreover, tariff was now implemented for
large company who wanted to import their product at other countries. There
reason of implementing this is to give way for small business to have an access
in trading system. The problem is, because of tariffs, international business
were no longer able to supply enough demand due to the payment of products.
With this, a consistent depression in economic status has visibly observed.
The news stated
that our country has capability to reduced Pandesal price up to Php 1.00. This
can somehow beneficial to those people
who really love to eat bread during
breakfast. But analyzing the situation, even though they decrease the price, it
cannot be afford by people who has low socioeconomic status. Imagine this, my
family is hungry, why should I buy a 10 pesos worth of pan – de – sal which
contains only 5 or 10 pieces? Will it satisfy my family? Obviously, even though
the price of bread decreases, as an average citizen, I will choose to purchase
noodles which is also made of flour, yet can satisfied the hungriness of my
whole family.
For baking
industry, since there are lots of potential substitutes to bread that may be
adopted by average citizens, it is better if we became wiser in budgeting
expenses so they can purchase more affordable raw materials, yet with quality.
Sometimes, we must not expect our business to gain high profits, rather, it is
better to open our hearts and understand to those who are in needs. Remember that
healthy individuals can become country’s manpower and manpower itself is a key
to economic success.
