DA offers loans to help market vendors during pork holiday

The Department of Agriculture (DA) announced a loan program on Monday to help market vendors in Metro Manila procure pork and other agricultural products directly from hog raisers and farmers' cooperatives.

Market vendors are joining the 'pork holiday', refusing to sell pork below the government-set price ceiling of PHP270 per kilogram for kasim and pigue, PHP300 for liempo, and PHP160 for dressed chicken.

The DA's loan program offers up to PHP5 million at zero interest over three to five years to market vendors' associations (MVAs) to enable them to buy pork carcasses directly from hog raisers and sell these at reasonable prices to consumers.