THE revelation last week that the retail price of refined sugar had topped P100 per kilogram caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth among the public, and sent the responsible authorities scrambling for a solution. As this has been a recurring problem through the years, it seems unlikely that they will find one.
That is not to say that they shouldn't try. The high price of sugar is an indication that food inflation — and as a consequence, headline inflation as a whole — is probably much worse than we are being led to believe, and perhaps even worse than economic managers realize. Not only is sugar a retail staple for consumers, it is a big input in a vast number of other food products, and thus has a considerable secondary knock-on effect on prices.
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