Cabinet divided on P6 tax on fuel

President Duterte’s Cabinet is apparently divided on his economic team’s proposal to impose a P6 tax on diesel, kerosene and cooking gas, and to increase the levy on gasoline from P4.35 per liter to P10.

Left- leaning officials are against it.

“Ultimately, millions of income- poor Filipinos have everything to lose with the economic team’s proposal to raise tax rates for petroleum products,” former congressman Terry Ridon, who now chairs the Presidential Commission on Urban Poor and holds Cabinet rank, said yesterday.

He said Duterte’s economic team “should look somewhere else to raise the revenues it needs for infrastructure spending in the next six years.”

“While it is correct that the President has declared that infrastructure is a pillar of the Duterte administration, the President also put at the center of government the welfare of ordinary Filipinos,” he said.

Ridon added that raising taxes on petroleum products would not only affect the transport sector, most of which belong to the urban poor, but also the prices of basic commodities.

“We will be off-tangent from the pro-people vision of the President if we will ram this proposal down the throats of the public, especially when an unacceptable argument for higher diesel taxes include an observation that since the rich have shifted to diesel-fed SUVs, there is already basis to raise taxes,” he stressed.

He reminded the economic team that Duterte was swept to power on the strength of his genuine commitment to uplift the lives of citizens.

He said the economic managers’ tax proposals run counter to such commitment.

The economic team is composed of Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III and Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia.

Ridon is former representative of party-list group Kabataan, which is part of the Bayan Muna-led leftist Makabayan bloc.

Other Makabayan bloc members in the Duterte Cabinet are Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano and National Anti-Poverty Commission chairperson Liza Maza, former representatives of Anakpawis and Gabriela, respectively.

President Duterte himself has admitted that he is a leftist but not a communist.

Another leftist Cabinet member is Social Welfare Secretary Judy Taguiwalo.

The National Democratic Front ( NDF), the political arm of the local communist movement, had recommended Taguiwalo and Mariano to the President.