MANILA, Philippines – The Independent Oil Price Review Committee has failed to properly study the alleged issue of overpricing, a transportation group said Thursday.
The Pinagkaisang Samahan ng Tsuper at Opereytor Nationwide (PISTON) President George San Mateo said in an interview over Radyo Inquirer 990AM that they would further scrutinize the results of the study and how it was conducted.
“We need to know details [of] how they did their study,” San Mateo said. “What we need to know is how much oil companies are really paying when they import.”
The committee had recently stated that there was no overpricing and that oil companies’ profits were reasonable.
San Mateo said that the important factors to look at would be how much oil companies buy their oil from their parent company abroad and how much they sell the oil locally.
He said that the committee was likely using the international spot market price as standard when they did their computations. The spot market price “is just a guide and can be different from the actual purchase cost,” San Mateo said.
“Purchase cost can only be seen by scrutinizing their supply contract,” which oil companies had previously refused to open, he said.