Local rice retailers worry about SRP on rice

RICE retailers are worried of poor sales due when the suggested retail price on rice products will be implemented in Central Visayas.

Rice retailer Maribeth Cabahit, 43, said most of her customers would want to buy rice with brand names such as Ganador, Lion Ivory and Sinandomeng.

Without such labels, she said her customers might get confused and might opt to buy less.

The retailers, however, would follw the National Food Authority’s (NFA) mandating to standardize price labels and that rice could only be called regular milled, well milled, premium, and special rice.

Names of rice products like Ganador, Sinandomeng and Super Angelica will no longer be allowed.

For imported rice, the NFA ordered the retailers to name these rice products based on what country they came from, such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Pakistan.

Reslyn Belia, 42, another rice retailer of Carbon Public market, expressed the same sentiment.

She said she was not sure if the standardization of the labels of rice would improve her sales.

“Ang mga tawo magdumdom man gyod na sa ilang bugas paliton (People would choose the rice products they were used to buying),” said Belia.

She said most of her customers prefer the quality of Ganador and Lion Ivory rice.

The Department of Agriculture and Department of Trade and Industry enforced a SRP to regulate prices of imported and locally produced rice and to combat inflation.

For regular milled rice, the SRP will be P39 per kilo; local well milled rice will now be at P44 per kilo; and local premium grade rice at P47 per kilo.

While imported well milled rice will now cost P39 per kilo; imported premium grade 1 rice will be P43 per kilo and imported premium grade 2 at P40 per kilo.