AMID high prices of oil and basic goods that pushed inflation above the central bank’s August target, Sen. Erwin Tulfo on Sunday called for the immediate passage of a bill amending the “archaic” Oil Deregulation Law to mandate pricing transparency among Philippine oil companies.
Tulfo, chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy, co-authored Senate Bill 641, or the “Institutionalizing Transparency in the Philippine Downstream Oil Industry Bill” filed by Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian to review Republic Act 8479, known as the Downstream Oil Industry Deregulation Act of 1998.
“Oil companies will just say ‘tomorrow, we will increase the prices by 5 pesos per liter,’ then we will have no choice but to pay,” Tulfo said in a statement.
“What we will do is we will strengthen the powers of the Department of Energy (DOE) over these companies. No more arbitrary price shocks. They will have to explain why they increase their prices in a certain way,” he added.
Tulfo said this has been a longstanding concern, especially in the transport sector, noting that crude prices were indiscriminately increased several times, while price rollbacks were minimal.
He also lamented how the Oil Deregulation Law became a burden to Filipinos, likening its effects to those of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira).
“Because of these outdated laws, system losses are being charged to the consumer. Electric companies are well aware that they need to upgrade their systems, but they just let them deteriorate because they can easily charge those loss fees to the public,” Tulfo said.
