The Department of Trade and Industry-Davao (DTI-11) has issued notices of violation to several establishments in the region for violating fair trade laws.

From the 2,209 firms and business establishments monitored by DTI-11, at least 26 were found to have violated fair trade laws, as of August 2025.

The penalties collected reached more than P1 million.

Most of the violators did not comply with product standards, particularly on appliances and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) products.

“Usually mga appliances, mga LPG that do not follow the product standard stipulated under Bureau of Product Standards we have 109 products currently under the Bureau of Product Standards each product may specific standard that they need to follow and that is what we check when we do monitoring and enforcement,” DTI-11 Consumer Protection Division Chief, Romeo Vasquez, said.

DTI-11 also urged local government units to activate their Local Price Coordinating Council (LPCC) to strengthen consumer protection.

The agency said only 27 of the 51 cities and municipalities in the region have active LPCCs.

DTI-11 also observed an increase in prices of some products.

“Right now inflation is really increasing not just in Davao Region, inflation has a lot of factors to consider - one is supply and demand, the global challenges that influence the prices of goods like fuel and on logistics,” Vasquez said.

“Most of the raw materials in producing our basic necessities mostly imported so for example tin cans mea plastics so in setting SRP price adjustment meron po siyang effect sa setting sa SRP,” DTI-11 Senior Trade Industry Specialist, Dexter Bermudez, added.

Despite limited manpower, DTI-11 assured the public that its monitoring will continue to ensure that prices are reasonable and protect consumers from violations such as overpricing.