Mideast war takes a bite out of street food vendors

To save a few pesos, 20-year-old Eric Garcia delicately turned a knob to adjust the flame under his warming trays to the lowest setting as he grapples with fuel costs that have nearly doubled in price.

While sticker shock at petrol stations has garnered the biggest headlines since the war forced the partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the rising price of LPG has hit the import-dependent archipelago’s humble street food vendors.

A day before speaking to Agence France-Presse, Garcia said he had been forced to raise the price of a bowl of pares to P65 after fuel costs reduced his daily earnings by a quarter.

“I’m only earning P1,500 (per day), because the rest is spent on LPG,” he said.

Garcia, who begins cooking at 3 a.m. every morning before hauling his stew to a middle-class neighborhood on a converted motorbike, said an 11-kilo tank of fuel, which typically lasts four days, that once cost P870 now costs P1,600.

“It’s the highest price of LPG that I’ve ever seen since I started here,” said Carlo Manalad, a supervisor at a store selling tanks of the gas, 90 percent of which is imported.

“If (our suppliers’) prices are high, we also raise our prices. Our profit is still the same,” the 64-year-old told AFP.

Many of the capital’s streetside food sellers, however, have no such luxury.

“If we raise our prices, our customers will buy from other stalls,” said Ronilo Titom, who has run a curbside canteen that caters call center workers and jeepney drivers, for two years.

Even while holding the line on prices, Titom said he had noticed his customer base slowly shrinking since the war erupted.

“Many of them have started to bring packed lunches instead (to save money),” said the 48-year-old who, like Garcia, is using his LPG ever more judiciously.

“Sometimes we let the soup get cold,” he admitted, noting that the cost of ingredients for his dishes had also been on the uptick since the war broke out.

The Philippines revealed Tuesday war-driven inflation figures that showed food prices had increased nearly twice as fast in March as the month before.

French fry vendor John Mark Abella, 25, who has also upped his prices by five pesos to compensate for LPG costs, told AFP he believed inflation was putting the squeeze on his mostly student customers.

With the uncertainty brought about by Mideast tensions, Tingog party-list Rep. Jude Acidre called on the Marcos administration to prepare for the next problem the country will face after the global oil crisis: the food crisis.