MANILA — President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. on Tuesday ordered the agriculture department to find out why egg prices recently surged despite sufficient supply, Malacañang said.

Marcos instructed Agriculture Senior Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban to meet with traders and poultry farmers to explain the "wide gap" between the farm gate and retail prices of eggs, the Palace said.

"We determined that the increase in the price of eggs is not commensurate to the increase in production cost," the President said in a video sent to reporters.

"We will have to have a look to see how to control that because we cannot explain almost one-half of the profit margin that we are seeing. We cannot attribute it to cost," he added.

Based on DA monitoring, medium-sized eggs retail at P9 as of Jan. 13, higher than the P6.90 reported in December last year.

But given a farm gate price of around P6.97, eggs should just retail between P7 and P7.50 per piece, the agency said. Reports show that eggs are being sold as high as P9.60 in some markets.

Higher egg prices could push up the prices of cakes and other pastries, a bakers group recently said.

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