by A. Lumaque

Roxas City (22 April) -- A specially priced bread will be delivered by the country's flour millers to Department of Agriculture (DA) starting April 25 so the government can sell to the marginalized sector on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Philippine Association of Flour Millers (PAFMIL) Executive Director Ric Pinca made known this 'Tinapay ng Bayan' project and said such aims to help marginalized people cope with spiraling food cost.

"A 550-gram bread loaf will be sold to the public at PhP37 each instead of the prevailing PhP44 commercial price while every bag containing seven pieces of 'pan de sal' each weighing 22 to 25 grams can be bought at PhP12," he said at Kapihan sa Sulo forum.

He noted PAFMIL and Chamber of Philippine Flour Millers are partnering in this project "for as long as such can be sustained" and until there's stable price of wheat, a component in making bread.

"We'll deliver to DA initially 3,000 "pan de sal" bags and 2,000 bread loaves," he said.

Pinca said flour millers will sell to DA each bread loaf and 'pan de sal' bag at PhP35 and PhP12, respectively.

"DA will add to these prices PhP1 per loaf or 'pan de sal' bag for cost it'll incur in delivering the goods to low-income villages every Friday while sellers there will add another PhP1 per item, however," he noted.

He said flour millers already contracted a bakery to produce the loaves and 'pan de sal' but declined to identify this establishment.

"If the project is expanded later, we'll contract more bakeries," he said.

Government, PAFMIL and CPFM came up with this project since bread cost rose as local price of flour jumped to PhP957 per sack from PhP600 per sack in April 2007.

He attributed this to rise in international wheat price to USD601 per metric ton from USD222 per metric ton during the reference period.

Such is the price change at Pacific Northwest where wheat is loaded en route to the Philippines, he pointed out.

"The Philippines imports all its wheat requirements for flour milling," he said. "We import some two million metric tons (MTs) of wheat. About 60 percent of this is for producing bread while the remaining 40 percent is for making cakes, pastry and similar products."

Pinca said lower agricultural production from drought in Australia and severe winter in Canada as well as farmers' shift to the more lucrative corn planting plunged world wheat production to about 607 million metric tons.

Since this volume is insufficient to meet the estimated 2007-2008 worldwide wheat demand of 619 million metric tons, he said the shortfall drove such commodity's price.

Hiked demand for wheat-based products like pasta is mainly from China and India where people are becoming more able to pay for such, he noted.