Philippine Amalgamated Supermarkets Association, Inc. - USDA FORUM ON STATUS OF THE ECONOMY

PAGASA was invited on 13 March 2023 to a Round Table Discussion at the Mactan Room of EDSA Shangri-la Hotel on Consumer Welfare, Nutrition and Food Security. After presentations were made by the DOST, PIDS, DTI and FEF's Dr. Prof. Ramon Clarete, former DA Usec. & now Laban Konsumer Pres. Mr. Jose Reaño commented, among others, that the SRP, for example, was doing more harm choking the trade industry than good. This gave STC the impetus to follow-through by informing DTI Asec. Atty. Ann Cabochan of how PAGASA feels about the inefficient effects of their SRPs on our pricing policies.

SRP should be used ONLY during calamities & times of emergency good for 60 days for affected areas locally or nationwide.
It is the reason why some retailers don't carry products on the List as some manufacturers only provide 2.9% margins for us to get by!
The List has less than 300 sku's but these are the market-leaders in their categories. When they sneeze, competitors catch colds. Other players position the prices of their products based on the prices of these market-leaders so the products on the List are critical to prices on the categories that they belong to.
Finally, one of the reasons why Retail Liberalization is not appealing to foreign investors is because of our extremely low margins which are choked some more by DTI's practice of ensuring that supermarket prices are compliant to those on their SRP List.