Four years ago, onions in the Philippines briefly cost more than meat. At the peak of the crisis in late 2022 a kilo sold for up to 800 pesos – more than a worker on the minimum wage earned in a day – and one bride famously carried a bouquet made of bulbs instead of flowers. Now the country’s competition authority says it knows who helped push prices that high.
The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) has fined six businesses and several of their executives a combined 1.76 billion pesos, roughly 28 million US dollars. It is the largest penalty the agency has issued since it was founded in 2016. Because onions count as a prime commodity, the law required the fines to be tripled; four of the firms received the maximum of 330 million pesos each.
According to the commission, the group carved up the market for imported red and yellow onions in 2020 and 2021 and between them held close to half of all approved import clearances. Evidence seized in a dawn raid in 2023 suggested a freight forwarder applied for permits in the names of other importers, while the shipments went into a single cold-storage operator’s warehouses before being sent around the country, from Bulacan to Davao.
Before the surge, a kilo had cost around 80 to 100 pesos. The shortage became a headache for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who had just taken office promising cheaper food, and it only eased when strong local harvests arrived in 2023.
The firms can still ask the PCC to reconsider. The watchdog says it is already consulting the justice department about possible criminal charges, and executive director Kenneth Tanate insisted that paying up would not end that effort.
