Proposals to Resolve the Recurring Oil Crisis in the Philippines

I have written a piece, originally for Palag Na! but later for Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Transportasyon (PMT), that is meant to consolidate and give a framework for proposals, both popularly demanded and what we managed to come up with, to resolve the recurring oil crisis in the Philippines. This is in the context of the oil price crisis of mid-2008. But the proposals, I think, remain valid even if the financial crisis and the global recession eroded the price of petroleum recently.

As with any alternative, the long-term and strategic changes needed is inevitably tied with the short-term and the mid-term - so the short-term measure of regulating the domestic downstream oil industry is inevitably related to the mid-term measure of supply-side management and industrial structure and the long-term vision of demand-side management towards oil independence, assuming oil to be a finite resource. Realizing these proposals, of course, must be accompanied with better service standards from the end of the transportation industry (and workers) themselves, something which can be developed later on.

Economic Terror: E-VAT and the Looming Consumer Crisis

Together with the political crisis that grips the presidency of Gloria Arroyo comes another crisis brutal in its scope and consequence. With a vote of 15-0, the Supreme Court (SC) finally decided that the Expanded Value Added Tax (E-VAT) Law is constitutional. While hopes of the administration for greater revenues are high after a legal success, the Filipino public in turn succumbs in fear of astronomical prices.