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MANILA - PHILIPPINE consumers already battling to cope with record rice and fuel prices can expect to pay more for beef and pork, media reports said.
Beef and pork prices have already doubled this year and with rising oil prices, increasing freight costs and a weakening peso, are set to rise again, an importers group told The Manila Times newspaper on Saturday.
Mr Jun Lim, vice-president of the Cold Chain Association of the Philippines, told the paper 90 per cent of the country's beef supply is imported, mostly from Brazil.
The price of imported beef in January was US$2.65 (S$3,61) a kilo, and in May it was US$4.50 a kilo. Pork was US$1.90 a kilo in January and US$2.50 in May, the paper said.
'For now, the price of chicken is stable, because most of the supply is produced locally,' Mr Lim told the paper.
'The reasons why the effect is not yet felt immediately, a lot of what is being sold in the market today are meats that came in two to three months ago and were in storage,' he said. 'But once those stocks are depleted, price increases will hit the consumers.'
The paper said meat prices are expected to increase by August or September.
On Friday, the government said it is to give the poor subsidies worth up to 93.6 billion pesos (about S$2.9 billion) to help them with the rising prices.
Some 23.5 million Filipinos, or the 26 per cent of the population who earn 67 pesos or less a day, have been hardest hit by high rice and petroleum prices.
Economic growth had slowed to 5.2 per cent in the first three months while inflation spiked to a three-year high of 8.3 per cent in April and could reach 9.6 per cent for May, the central bank said on Friday. -- AFP
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