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The Philippines
AsiaSoutheast Asia

Greedy Philippines traders blamed for hoarding food, jacking up prices: ‘there’s no shortage’

  • The Philippines’ government and lawmakers have accused traders of creating artificial shortages of basic food staples to increase prices
  • Onions are the latest scarce ingredient – despite Filipino farmers reporting a bumper harvest last year and selling their crops at a discount

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Protesters hold signs during a demonstration calling for government action to reduce food prices outside the Philippine Department of Agriculture in Quezon City earlier this month. Photo: EPA-EFE
Bloomberg
Ferdinand Marcos Jnr made a curious move when he became Philippine president-elect in mid-2022: he named himself agriculture minister, pledging to fix the country’s food problems.
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The decision showed the political weight of the often unglamorous job, and highlighted the potential risk to the new president. But quick solutions have been hard to find. The Philippines has reported shortages of everything from salt to sugar over the last few months even as the economy grew the fastest since the 1970s last year.
The latest scarce ingredient is onions, which briefly cost more than meat earlier this month. Prices have become so absurdly high that 10 Philippine Airlines flight attendants were caught bringing the vegetables back with them from the Middle East.

The shortages of basic food staples are being felt throughout the economy and helped propel inflation to near the highest levels since the global financial crisis in 2008. Burger King said that it’s all out of onions, Coca-Cola had to suspend some operations because it couldn’t get enough sugar, and Marcos this month described the surge in food prices an “emergency situation”.

A man opens a truck with onions at a market in Manila earlier this month. Prices are soaring despite the Philippines reporting a bumper onion crop last year. Photo: AFP
A man opens a truck with onions at a market in Manila earlier this month. Prices are soaring despite the Philippines reporting a bumper onion crop last year. Photo: AFP

As in much of the world, the cost of food, fuel and fertiliser have all jumped since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year. But the Philippines is particularly vulnerable, despite being among the world’s biggest producers of rice, coconuts and bananas. The World Food Programme estimates that one in 10 households in the country are food insecure, with those reliant on agriculture most affected.

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The government and lawmakers blame greedy traders for hoarding food to create artificial shortages that allows them to jack up prices. When discussing the onion crisis earlier this month, Senator Imee Marcos, the president’s sister, said there’s “a level of treachery and manipulation involved because these prices are inexplicable”.

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