DAVAO CITY, Philippines — Three days before the Christmas celebration, the Department of Trade and Industry XI assured the public that there will be no price hike for “noche Buena” items all through out the yuletide celebration.
“There has been a monitoring done by provincial offices and there is no significant increase of Noche Buena products since that is our main concern,” Maria Belenda Ambi, Ceso VI, regional director of DTI 11 confirmed Wednesday.
Mercy Porisima, a retailer store owner, said the “no price hike” announcement of DTI would help her buy more goods to sell for the consumers.
Porisima wished that it would continue even after the yuletide holidays.
“Maybe it is only this time that the prices will not increase but after Christmas season, the prices will increase just like the price of the gasoline,” she said.
Meanwhile, Ambi said the trade agency is expecting a volume increase of agricultural products.
For instance, the banana industry will increase its demand since it is the number one product exported to other countries handled by the industry cluster.
“For banana industry cluster, there are a lot of stakeholders, we have the Phil Export and then we also have private organizations that are looking on the development of our banana and other food products,” she said.
The regional director assured that the increase of demand of agricultural products will not be a problem, saying that it welcomed the increase “because that is the clamor of our producers and exporters to increase productivity in their existing lands.”
DTI also announced that they are focused on the inclusive growth of the micro-enterprises named the “Kapatid: Angat lahat”.
Enterprises that fell in micro-enterprises have a capitalization of P3 million and below.
Ambi said the project aims to find large companies to partner with the small companies here to be part of the supply chain.
“This also aims to let large companies on communities and small enterprises,” she said.
In order to help micro-enterprises, Ambi said that come 2017, they plan to have a project named “Pondo Para Sa Pagbabago At Pagasenso” which is a financing facility for micro-enterprises.
“It’s like a day to day payment kind of system since its more effective to micro-enterprises like vendors in the market,” she said.
The regional director said that they will make sure that the interest will be low so that micro-enterprises can afford to pay. (davaotoday.com)
