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An additional 1.34 million Filipinos are pushed to poverty due to the oil price shocks since the United States and Israel’s aggression on Iran, a study revealed.
Piston said fuel prices and maintenance costs have become significantly higher than in October 2023, when current fares were set, widening the gap between operating expenses and daily earnings.
“If adequate support is not provided, fish production and the country's food security are at serious risk."
The Philippine government seems helpless in regulating oil price hikes. Progressive groups say the government should go beyond stopgap measures to address the crisis.
Amid the US-Israel war on Iran, we need to keep pressing government for reforms.
Assistance is insufficient to offset the effects of rising fuel prices on agricultural production.
Aside from the abolition of regional wages, KMU is pushing for immediate economic relief for the workers and the junking of regressive taxes on oil, food, and basic social services.
According to the groups, suspending the excise tax is a mere “temporary fix” when people’s organizations had long been calling for the repeal of the Oil Deregulation Law to regulate the prices of oil and other petroleum products.
Without government intervention, public utility drivers will continue to bear the brunt of rising fuel prices as their daily earnings steadily decline.
Following the three-consecutive oil price hikes after new year, Bayan Muna held a protest in Petron gasoline station in Philcoa, Quezon City today, Jan. 20.
"No matter what we do, it seems that it is still not enough."
For Filipino transport drivers, the incessant oil price hikes may force them to stop operating. Worse, it keeps them from putting food on their table.
For the 22nd time this year, the price of diesel will again go up this week with oil firms announcing a price hike of PHP 0.60 per liter.
“Higher taxes for oil would create a domino effect that would spike the prices of basic goods and services like water and electricity.”
International oil price data show local oil prices should have been going down rather than up.
Typhoon Yolanda destroyed lives and properties of as much as 10 million people in Eastern Visayas, but this “other Yolanda” represented by simultaneous price hikes “will affect most if not all Filipinos.” – Banking and Financial Unions
“We condemn the collusion of the Aquino government and Big 3 Oil cartel in its manipulated and cartelized oil price movements and in its extreme exploitation of drivers and the citizens.” – Piston
As buses whiz by beyond the police line and trains pass overhead, these children appear to serenade the police who were preventing them from protesting the oil deregulation law. (Sitio San Roque, Quezon City) — in Quezon City, Philippines.
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