By ARNOLD PADILLA
There’s good news for its close to five million customers to start the New Year, said utility giant Manila Electric Power Co. (Meralco). It claimed that its January billing will go down by 30.5 centavos per kilowatt-hour (kWh) due to lower generation and transmission charges. But Meralco did not say that the said reduction is just one side of the story.
By ARNOLD PADILLA
Malacañang is threatening to reimpose an oil price control if oil companies will not follow the conditions outlined by Mrs. Arroyo. Government, however, has given up the high ground with its lifting of EO 839 and continued adherence to the discredited deregulation policy.
Ni ARNOLD PADILLA Bulatlat.com tulad mo rin, noynoy, ang dambuhalang pabrika sa inyong azucarera na walang imik nang dumating ang sandaang sasakyan ng protesta patuloy lamang sa pagbuga ng usok ng mga makinang lumalamon sa tubô at tubo, at tulad ng mga armadong gwardya sa kanyang pintuan hindi ikaw, kundi si bise palengke ang sumalubong…
By ARNOLD PADILLA
To a certain degree, Executive Order 839 questioned the lies long peddled by the oil companies and staunch defenders of neoliberalism about neoliberal free market economics. If left unchallenged, EO 839 could become a precedent in policy making: that the government, in the name of public good and welfare, could take decisive action against abusive corporations.
By ARNOLD PADILLA
While it is supposed to be based on the Oil Deregulation Law, the executive order mandating the recent price rollback in effect puts into question the wisdom of oil deregulation. Moreover, the oil companies have found a way to offset whatever “losses” they would incur in Luzon due to the EO: by overpricing in the Visayas and Mindanao.
By ARNOLD PADILLA
The challenge that policy makers now face is how to raise the needed resources to fund in a sustainable manner and without placing additional burden on Filipinos the requirements of relief and rehabilitation.
By ARNOLD PADILLA MANILA — “A President must be on the job 24/7, ready for any contingency, any crisis, anywhere, anytime.” “As a country in the path of typhoons… we must be as prepared as the latest technology permits to anticipate natural calamities when that is possible; to extend immediate and effective relief when it…
By ARNOLD PADILLA
The latest incarnation of the text tax comes in the context of an administration under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to widen its revenue base. It was the IMF that first openly pushed the text tax idea in 2002 to address the government’s burgeoning budget deficit.
By ARNOLD PADILLA
No matter how oil firms deny the allegations that they are overcharging the consumers, the widespread public perception that oil companies are abusive and profit-hungry will remain. This will be the case as long as the oil industry is deregulated and oil companies are allowed to automatically increase their prices and at the same time not compelled to publicly divulge how they compute their price adjustments.
In her recent State of the Nation Address, President Arroyo claimed to have created eight million jobs, or an average of a million jobs per year in the past eight years. But where exactly did this figure come from? A closer look at the government’s own data yields a statistical distortion.
The Americans, like the Europeans, have an inventory of what they call “barriers” in the Philippine Constitution that they want the Arroyo regime to remove through constitutional amendments. Meanwhile, the Constitution will have to conform with the Jpepa, the Philippine-Japan agreement, not the other way around. (Second of two parts)