Diesel prices up by ₱2.60/ liter; gasoline by ₱0.70/liter
Motorists filling up their vehicles with diesel products will need to cough up additional ₱2.60 per liter.
Gasoline prices also have leaner price hike of ₱0.70 per liter, but kerosene products will have hefty price adjustment of ₱2.80 per liter.
Higher kerosene prices would trigger pressure on industries using it, including the airlines industry.
Around press time, the oil companies that already sent notices on their price hikes include Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation, Cleanfuel, Seaoil, Chevron and PTT Philippines effective Tuesday (August 23); while their competitor-firms are anticipated to follow.
So far, after series of price rollbacks in more than two months, this is considerably a fresh round of price hikes at the domestic pumps – that was following the cost upticks that reigned in the global oil market again last week.
As of Monday (August 22) trading, the price of international benchmark Brent crude just skidded slightly to $95 per barrel from last Friday’s $96 per barrel; while Dubai crude was on a parallel level of $95 per barrel.
Based on the monitoring report of the Department of Energy (DOE), the upswing in prices in the world market had been mainly triggered by lingering concerns of tight supply in the world market – which is seen as a longer dilemma compared to the temporary geopolitical events perturbing market fundamentals.
Given this round of price hikes, the country’s public transport system could be tormented anew with higher financial burden – and their next plea could be another round of subsidy from the government.
At this stage though, the Marcos administration has not totally figured out yet how it will manage the continued grant of subsidies – especially to the marginalized sectors, such as the public utility vehicle (PUV) drivers, as well as farmers and fisherfolk in the agricultural sector.
The stance of the current government leadership will be to extend targeted subsidies, instead of suspending excise taxes or value added tax (VAT) for petroleum products, because that will entail revenue losses for the State.
There had been previous proposals to revive the Oil Price Stabilization Fund (OPSF), or the oil pricing subsidy scheme in the Marcos administration in the 1970s-1980s, but there is no definitive plans laid down by the DOE relating to that policy sphere.