Noche Buena 2025 price guide shows price hikes for 95 items

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) released its price guide for items typically consumed during the traditional Christmas feast, which reflected increases for 95 food items.

“Of the 256 holiday food items across 14 categories, 129 retained their prices, while 95 posted minimal increases due to higher costs of ingredients, packaging, and labor,” the DT said in a statement accompanying the 2025 Noche Buena price guide.

The price guide lists suggested retail prices for supermarkets and groceries and will be in effect until Dec. 31.

Prices rose for some ham products in the guide, but most prices were maintained, the DTI said.

Prices of two stock-keeping units (SKUs) of fruit cocktail held steady, while prices were adjusted for five others.

Meanwhile, prices held steady for only one of the 12 spaghetti sauce items, while two of the 15 tomato sauce SKUs were also maintained.

This year, the list included new items such as nata de coco and kaong, which the department said reflects the growing demand for dessert ingredients.

“Meanwhile, DTI also secured price rollbacks on six items after consultations with manufacturers,” it added.

These include 500-gram CDO American Style Ham, which saw a four-peso rollback to PHP 170; 800-gram and 1-kilogram King Sue Piña Ham, which had a PHP 7 and PHP 6 price decrease to PHP 520 and PHP 637, respectively; and 800-gram King Sue Sweet, which is one peso cheaper at PHP 449.

The price of 500-gram Danes Queso de Bola, a type of Edam cheese, saw a PHP 10 rollback to PHP 300, while 500-gram Sunshine Sweet Style Spaghetti Sauce had a P3.5 decrease to PHP 48.50.

“With these adjustments, four ham products reverted to their 2024 prices, while select queso de bola and spaghetti sauce will now be sold at prices even lower than last year,” DTI said.

Trade Secretary Ma. Cristina A. Roque said the DTI “continues to carry out the President’s call to keep basic necessities and price commodities and holiday goods within reach of families.” – Justine Irish DP Table

Philexport calls for more export promotion funding

The national government should allocate more funds to export promotion and micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) development, the Philippine Exporters Confederation, Inc. (Philexport) said.

In a statement sent over the weekend, Philexport President Sergio R. Ortiz-Luis Jr. urged the Marcos government not to reduce public spending in the wake of the corruption issues around flood control projects.

Instead, he said that the government should “allocate more funds where they are badly needed, like export promotion and MSME development—two key sectors that can help revive the country’s slowing economy.”

He described the cutting down on government spending as “unwise,” noting that the money spent on flood control projects did not go where it was intended for.

“The government spending that was cut was probably the ones that were lost to floods anyway, so they don’t really go to the economy,” he said.

“We are hoping that [much] of this budget that was lost may go to… export as an investment—because we have not been investing in export—and to the SMEs,” he added. — Justine Irish D.  Tabile