Photo courtesy of Pxhere.com
DAVAO CITY, Philippines — Oil companies implemented for the second consecutive week a new round of price increases, effective 6 am Tuesday.
The price for gasoline hiked by P1.60 per liter; P1.20 per liter for diesel and P1.05 per liter for kerosene.
Drivers slammed the latest oil price increases as it would result to decreasing take home income.
Dodong Francisco, chairperson of Sasa Drivers Association, said drivers consume 15-18 liters of gasoline a day.
“Our daily income could no longer suffice for the needs of our family. Prices of daily commodities also increased. Operators, on the other hand,demand for an increase in the rent due to increases in auto parts,” he added.
Local daily rental is pegged at P700.
George San Mateo, national president of the Pinagkaisang Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Opereytor Nationwide (PISTON), condemned the successive oil price increases.
He said the Duterte government did not address the continuing overpricing of oil products and the impact of the TRAIN law.
“We urged the government to be a major player in the upstream and downstream oil industry through PNOC and Petron for us to benefit from the newly discovered oil source in Alegria, Cebu. PETRON should be back to public ownership,” he added.
Rick Baron, spokesperson of Transport of Southern Mindanao for Solidarity, Independence and Nationalism (TRANSMISION-PISTON), called for the scrapping of the oil deregulation law and the TRAIN law.
Furthermore, PISTON called for removal of the 12% Value Added Tax on petroleum products and a decrease in prices of diesel to maintain the current P8 minimum fare.
The Department of Energy attributed the latest hike to the increase of crude oil prices above $80/barrel in the international market and the depreciation of the peso.
According to Nilo Geroche, Chief Science Research specialist of DOE 11, since the TRAIN law’s implementation in January, increases in gasoline products have accumulated up to P9.67, P10.01 for diesel and P7.75 for kerosene.
The DOE is set to issue a policy for the monitoring of the prices of petroleum products to protect the interest of the consumers.
Under the new policy, the DOE will require the oil companies to provide a weekly notice of the price adjustments alongside with the computation of their products’ components with considerations in the international price movement, the biofuels cost and the capital/operational cost recovery.
The DOE is mandated under the Republic Act No. 8479, or the Downstream Oil Industry Deregulation Act of 1998, to monitor both international and domestic price movements of petroleum products. (davaotoday.com)
