No price hike for pandesal and Pinoy tasty

Bread manufacturers will not increase the price of pandesal and Pinoy Tasty until the end of the year.

This development came after the meeting between officials of the Philippine Baking Industry Group and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) on Thursday.

Secretary Ramon Lopez said this is a welcome move to help stabilize prices. "They just want to help the country and not aggravate the situation."

DTI data showed Pinoy Pandesal remains at P21.50 while Pinoy Tasty retails at P35 since April 2016.

Meanwhile, the price of Harinang Pinoy that is sold by flour millers will remain the same.

"This will help ease inflation but the bigger impact would be on the price reduction in rice," Lopez said.

Earlier this week, DTI and Department of Agriculture agreed to impose a suggested retail price on rice in a bid to temper prices.

Meanwhile, several Noche Buena items will increase by 1 to 4 percent, lower than the earlier estimate of 3 to 8 percent.

DTI Undersecretary Ruth Castelo said they agreed with manufacturers to impose minimum price adjustment on Noche Buena products.

"Only what is necessary to prevent them from incurring losses. We appealed to the manufacturers' sense of social responsibility to impose absolute minimum increase and maybe absorb some of the burden that our consumers carry and they agreed," he said. — BAP, GMA News