Fishers group calls on DOE to slash fuel prices

MANILA, Philippines—Militant fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) on Monday urged the Department of Energy to immediately slash the prices of petroleum products by as much as P9 a liter, in light of another impending oil price hike this week.

The P9 per liter, according to Pamalakaya, represented the alleged accumulated overpriced cost of oil since January 2008.

In a statement, Pamalakaya vice chair Salvador France said Energy Secretary Jose Rene D. Almendras should order the immediate rollback as a corrective measure against overpricing. He also urged Almendras to pursue tight policies to stop the oil cartel from manipulating and overpricing the cost of petroleum products.

The Oil Deregulation Law, however, prohibits the government from intervening in and regulating oil prices to ensure that market forces would indeed govern over prices of local petroleum products.

Citing the study made by the independent think tank group Ibon Philippines and the umbrella alliance Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), France disclosed that for this year alone, the price of diesel went up by P7.55 a liter from January to July 2011, while the price of unleaded gasoline soared by P7.65 per liter in the same period.

France slammed the monopolistic activity of the Big Three in the petroleum industry, noting that this was made easy by the fact that Petron, Shell and Chevron controlled some 1,500 gasoline stations, 960 gasoline stations and 850 gasoline stations all over the country respectively. He said Petron controls 37.8 percent of the market share, while Shell and Chevron holds 27.4 percent and 11.9 percent of the market, respectively.

The small independent players have only 804 gasoline stations and enjoy a collective share of the remaining 22.9 percent of the market share, Pamalakaya added.

Meanwhile, Pamalakaya reiterated its proposed P 32-billion oil subsidy to small fisherfolk to enable them to fish and keep the wheel of production in the fisheries sector moving. The sector is highly affected by high prices of oil products and skyrocketing prices of fishing gears and equipments.

Under the annual P 32billion production subsidy for the fisheries sector proposed by Pamalakaya, all fishermen who own a small motorized boat will receive a minimum P 4,500 monthly oil subsidy, while those who operate non-motorized banca will receive P 2,000 monthly production subsidy.

According to Pamalakaya, the P4,500 monthly subsidy constitutes about 50 percent of the monthly expenses spent by fishermen owning a small fishing boat in their daily fish capture. The group said the proposed measure if approved will benefit 313,985 small fishing boat operators and will cost the government a monthly production subsidy of P 1.4 billion per month or P 16 billion per year.