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Filipino commuters have to wait 20 to 30 minutes to secure a ride and another one to 2.5 hours of travel time to reach their destination.
A 20-passenger jeepney usually has a full tank capacity of 60 liters, which means that the driver is spending ?1,107 ($21.83) more to fill up his tank. That is equivalent to about 29 kilos of rice - or two weeks’ worth of the regular consumption of a five- to six-member household.
Women peasant group Amihan called on the government to aid Typhoon Maring-hit farming and fishing communities in Northern Luzon provinces that have been battling very low farm gate prices due to massive importation.
Overpriced gasoline and diesel, for instance, gave oil firms an estimated P38.47 billion (US$757.13 million) in additional income, of which P4.62 billion ($90.93 million) went to the government as value-added tax (VAT).
“The Department of Agriculture never learns. Every time there is an alleged shortage, the default solution is to flood our market with imported fish. Yet this measure never addresses and resolves the crisis in our fisheries production that happens on a yearly basis."
“Substantial revenues can be raised by taxing the country’s super-rich who can well afford to contribute much more to COVID-19 response and other needs. This is aside from how the administration can realign funds from bloated infrastructure, military and police, and debt servicing items in the proposed 2022 budget.”
“The current regime is set to leave a more food-insecure Philippines. Duterte is the biggest typhoon, the worst pest for a Filipino farmer. One in four food products in the country is imported.”
The relatively high growth rate was seen because it is the first to be measured against the low base of when the lockdowns were at their worst last year, including a 17 percent contraction in the second quarter of 2020.
Data from DOST’s Food and Nutrition Institute also revealed that Vitamin A deficiency prevalence among children six months to five years old had dropped from 40.1 percent to 16.9 percent.
The Duterte regime may spin the narratives on the economy all they want. But all indicators show that the country is in a much worse shape today than when it took over in 2016.
Micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) owners are still trying to get back on their feet after enduring the burden of the world’s longest lockdown.
Data show that the policies and programs of Duterte continued and inflamed the structural crisis of our economy. To be sure, the pandemic made it more acute. But make no mistake - Duterte’s economic legacy is far worse than the pandemic.
What does it take to cook adobo? An ordinary worker's whole pay for a day.
For the 22nd time this year, the price of diesel will again go up this week with oil firms announcing a price hike of PHP 0.60 per liter.
With practically all House members – except Duterte’s son and a few die-hard Duterte lawmakers – co-authoring the measure, Bayanihan 3 brags the unprecedented and massive support of different lawmakers who crossed party lines. The political reasons are obvious, but on one hand, such a move in the House sans Palace nod says a lot about Duterte’s deliberate neglect of calls for cash aid.
"We won’t be fooled by the pretext that reopening our natural resources to large-scale mining would help revive the pandemic-battered economy as it would inflict serious damage than repair."
“Why would the government launch a National Food Security Summit, if it will only rely on imports instead of boosting local production? The summit should be boycotted because it is organized by those who instigated the food crisis and those who did not address the legitimate demands of rice farmers and food producers.”
Where will the Bayanihan 3 go? Take a look.
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