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Another Triple WhammyUnabated oil price increases, soaring food prices, and worsening unemployment are plaguing the Filipino people today. And contrary to its claims, the Arroyo government cannot escape its accountability for it. BY BENJIE OLIVEROS The lowest priced commercial rice is around P33 ($0.74) per kilo. It used to be around P23 ($0.518) per kilo at the start of the year. Pork is now selling at around P180 ($4.058) per kilo when it was around P140 ($3.15) per kilo at the start of the year. Again the Arroyo government says that the food crisis is worldwide and it cannot do anything about it. Some 2.9 million Filipinos, or 8 percent of the labor force, were reported as jobless in April and 19.8 percent were underemployed. The industrial sector lost 261,000 jobs during the last 12 months. Of these, 183,000 jobs were shaved from manufacturing and 34,000 jobs from mining. The Arroyo government blames the strengthening of the peso for the loss of jobs in manufacturing. Seemingly clueless, newly-installed presidential spokesperson Jesus Dureza was quoted as saying that the entry of new graduates into the labor force in April are to blame for the increase in the unemployment rate. Duh! The Arroyo government’s accountability While monopoly pricing by big oil companies and speculative attacks by hedge fund managers, financial investment houses, and banks push the prices of oil up relentlessly, the economic program and policies of the Arroyo government add to the burden of the Filipino people and make us vulnerable to their profiteering designs. Ever since the Downstream Oil Industry Deregulation Act of 1998 was passed, pump prices of oil in the country has increased more than 500 percent. This year alone, it has already increased 15 times. That is because under a deregulated environment, oil companies are able to increase pump prices at will; and while the law supposedly prohibits cartel pricing, it is obvious that oil companies, including big and small players, increase prices at the same rate and only hours apart. The government is even planning to sell its remaining 40 percent share at Petron, thereby giving up any opportunity to influence prices. In India, there have only been two increases in pump prices for the year because it controls and subsidizes fuel prices. Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Sri Lanka likewise control oil prices. Thus, pump prices in these countries have increased only recently. The fact that the oil industry is likewise deregulated in the US and Europe does not make the Arroyo government’s policy right. That is why the demand of striking truckers, taxi drivers, farmers, and fisherfolk in France, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, England, Greece, Germany, among others, is for their governments to control and subsidize fuel prices and to lower taxes. Worse, the VAT the Arroyo government imposes on petroleum products, which is passed on by oil companies to consumers, jacks up pump prices by around P5 to P6 ($0.11 to $0.13) per liter; and for every P1 per liter increase in the pump price of oil, the government earns an additional 12 centavos in VAT collections. Thus, the P3 billion ($67,643,742) in fuel discounts for jeepney and bus drivers that the Arroyo government promised to give and the P1 billion ($22,547,914) subsidy it is offering to public transport drivers who would opt to convert the engines of their vehicles to be able to use LPG as fuel is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the windfall in tax collections the Arroyo government gets with every increase in pump prices. In 2006, the government earned P49.2 billion (1,109,357,384) in VAT collections from sales of petroleum products alone. The policies of the Arroyo government that prefer to import rice rather than produce it, and favor the conversion of prime agricultural lands to industrial enclaves and commercial centers, the lease of inalienable lands being cultivated by indigenous peoples to mining companies, and the conversion of rice lands to the cultivation of cash crops led to the dependence of the country on rice imports. The Philippines is even being blamed for intensifying the spikes in rice prices after the Arroyo government’s frantic efforts to import rice. Also, the Arroyo government’s lack of support to the agricultural sector and its policy of liberalizing imports, including that of agricultural products, keep agricultural production in the country in a state of backwardness. This makes it vulnerable to the vagaries of nature thereby causing instability in food production and consequently, the volatility in prices. According to IBON Foundation, the Arroyo government’s unemployment and underemployment rates, averaging 11.3 percent (The Arroyo government claims a lower unemployment rate because it revised the definition of unemployment in April 2005, which reduced the number of unemployed by about 3.5 percent) and 18.9 percent respectively, are the worse in the country’s history. Because the Arroyo government intensified the implementation of its privatization, deregulation, and liberalization policies - in line with globalization - the economy is continuously losing jobs in the manufacturing sector because of bankruptcies and closures of Filipino-owned corporations, which lose out in the competition with foreign manufacturing giants. Manufacturing shed 18,000 jobs and construction, 31,000 jobs in 2006. Thus, it is not surprising that 183,000 manufacturing jobs and 34,000 jobs in mining were lost during the period April 2007-April 2008. What was revealing in the more recent data is that the loss in jobs in manufacturing has become worse. This triple whammy of problems is causing untold hardships and sufferings on the Filipino people. And contrary to its claims, the Arroyo government cannot escape its accountability for it. It’s now up to us to make the Arroyo government realize that we have had enough of the hardships and sufferings. It is up to us to defend our rights to a decent life and to fight for a government that genuinely promotes our rights and interests. Bulatlat ( categories: )
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