Oil prices won’t go down until after December, says DOE

September 24 ------ The price of petroleum products will not go down until after December, an official of the Department of Energy said. At a news conference following a meeting among oil industry representatives from the public and private sectors, Energy Undersecretary Sharon Garin said there was a need to ease the impact of oil prices in the last quarter. “The oil prices will only decrease after December. That is our projection” Garin said. “We really need to ease oil prices in the next three months, alleviate its effect on the public because oil prices also affect our inflation rate," she added.

Garin said there were suggestions from the members of Congress with the help of the private sector. "We will wait for next week so we can have a better Christmas than we can expect,” Garin said. The meeting came on the eve of the 11th consecutive oil price increase on Tuesday, September 19. ACT-CIS party list Representative Erwin Tulfo, who was in the meeting with Garin and Speaker Martin Romualdez, said the oil industry representatives were seeking the suspension of the excise tax on oil.

He said they were also asking for a policy that will allow them to buy larger amounts of imported bio ethanol oil until the end of the year to bring down the oil prices. “What they want is to suspend the excise tax and ease the law requiring purchase of locally made bio ethanol oil. If these are done simultaneously, it will ease up the oil price per liter of about P14,” Tulfo said. Tulfo, however, said that the lawmakers were not satisfied with these since they also want the oil industry to make a contribution to decrease the oil prices. “They also have to make a sacrifice. We are one nation here,” Tulfo said. “The Speaker was asking them, what can you contribute? They had a hard time answering, and we will meet again next week. We made a suggestion and they agreed that they will take it to their principals,” Tulfo added.

Garin agreed with Tulfo that it should be a shared burden. “These suggestions do not affect their balance sheet, while the suspension of excise tax on oil alone would cost P9.4 billion a month,” Garin said. Tulfo said that the P4.5 billion loss per month in the event of a suspension of excise tax on oil until the end of the year was too big of a stake for the government to let go without reciprocity. “The solution should be a give and take, and they agreed that they will tell this to their principals and we will meet again next week,” Tulfo said.

Source: gmanetwork.com