It can be guesstimated that the total additional profits generated by the oil firms from overpricing gasoline and diesel is about P142.50 million a day. Of this amount, P17.10 million went to government in the form of the 12 percent value-added tax (VAT).
Indeed, there is a need, as the Asia Peasant Coalition puts it, for the farmers “to organize and mobilize for our own people’s summit together with other marginalized and oppressed sectors that suffer the gravest hunger and poverty because of imperialist control and domination over the world’s food and agriculture.”
But what is even more alarming for Filipinos is that amid the surge in new COVID-19 cases, the response of the Duterte government to the pandemic more than a year into the crisis remains grossly inadequate and incompetent. While implementing the strictest and longest lockdown in the region, the Philippines continues to lag behind our neighbors in Southeast Asia in actually responding to the pandemic.
This latest spate of attacks against activists came a mere nine weeks since the PNP launched a similar operation in Panay island. Nine people were killed and 17 were arrested by the police in several indigenous Tumandok communities on Dec 30, 2020.
As COVID-19 wipes out whatever is left of the limited opportunities for Filipinos to earn a living, the Duterte administration’s lacking response, combined with an oppressive political environment, creates conditions for a perfect storm of social unrest.
Oil firms-imposed price adjustments are higher than what should be – by P 2.41 per liter for diesel and P4.76 per liter for gasoline, based on a DOE-recognized formula. The Big Three, a Duterte backer and other oil firms, rake in tens of millions of pesos daily from profiteering.
The hundreds of thousands of LRT-2 commuters affected by the shutdown are at the mercy of, to the say the least, an inefficient government agency and its inept private contractors that profit millions of pesos in taxpayers’ and commuters’ money.
Focusing on just Manila Water diverts the issue away from privatization as the central issue in, and underlying reason behind, the artificial shortage. As such, it also has the effect of absolving government of responsibility when in fact, the biggest accountability in all this lies with government for abandoning its duty to ensure water for the people.
While not a guarantee to lower prices in the long run, opening up the rice sector to unbridled imports leaves the country’s rice security at the mercy of an unpredictable and increasingly unreliable world market. This happens as 95 percent of Philippine rice imports come from just two countries whose own domestic production is either slowing down or declining. Globally, rice production has been steadily decelerating in the past four decades.
For most Filipino families, especially the poor and those in the lower income brackets, the rising costs of these basic needs mean tremendous pressure on household budgets.
What could possibly explain the exclusion of these giant conglomerates – two of the biggest not only in the Philippines but also in the Asian region? By ARNOLD PADILLA Bulatlat.com MANILA -- The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has recently released a list...
Such additional tax burden is enough to buy one to three kilos of rice (P27 per kilo of regular NFA rice or P37 a kilo of regular commercial rice) for their family's consumption.
Bulatlat SPECIAL REPORT: The US would rather not stop with its aid program here. It is the key with which they’ve been maintaining their domination of the Philippine economy and military even after the Philippines’ 1946 nominal independence.
Government is clearly exaggerating the supposed economic gains from EDCA while concealing the fact that negotiators gave too many unjustifiable perks to the US.
If the Aquino government is willing to incur more debts to guarantee the profits of whoever will win the LRT1 project, why can’t it incur those debts for investing instead in LRT's expansion?
By ARNOLD PADILLA Bulatlat.com MANILA -- In 2012, the dominant theme peddled by the Aquino administration was “good governance is good economics”. Malacañang’s hoax is that the “daang matuwid” (righteous path) has created a favorable environment for inclusive...
By ARNOLD PADILLA
Consumers face continuing injustice as they shoulder additional power costs (on top of possible rotating brownouts) while Meralco delays accounting for its over-collections that could reach more than P7 billion. Thus, it is very reasonable for consumers to demand that whatever planned rate increases by Meralco must be disallowed by the ERC.
By ARNOLD PADILLA
In a poor country where one out of two people dies without receiving any medical attention, where more than half of the population do not have access to basic health care, community-based health workers who provide needed services to fill this health-care gap should be heralded as heroes, not thrown to jail and tortured.
Related blog post: The AFP is telling us we need more NPA guerrillas
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