EDITORIAL - Hard to believe we're not being played

No irony could have been more apparent and pronounced than when diesel prices rose on exactly the same day reduced jeepney fares took effect nationwide. Diesel is the main fuel for jeepneys. When prices of diesel go up, it ought to follow that jeepney fares should also go up. That they should instead go down speaks volumes of the lack of a mechanism to address fluctuations in the public transport sector.

Actually, jeepney fares should have gone down long ago, when prices of diesel and other petroleum products started plummeting. But because there is no mechanism to automatically address fluctuation problems, the solution is to go through the tedious process of applying for a fare reduction. And that could take weeks, even months, if at all.

A process that takes that long always runs the risk of being overtaken by events, such as what happened. It took such a long time for government to approve the downward adjustment of jeepney fares in face of plummeting oil prices that by the time it finally decided to approve fare reductions, oil prices started to rebound and rise.

So, what will government do now? Surely it will not order a stay of its approval granting lower jeepney fares even if diesel prices have started to go up. To do so would not only create a mess in the public transport sector, it can also create havoc in the political sector, with officials expectedly getting bombarded by a relentless barrage of complaints.

Obviously, the safest way out here is to allow the fare reduction to go on for a while and cross one's fingers that the diesel price hike will not be followed by another. For if another fuel price hike happens, even if it does not affect the preferred fuel for the public transport sector, the signal it will be sending is that the oil industry has become volatile again.

And nothing drives up fuel prices significantly than volatility in the oil industry. Right now, even in face of a global oil glut, it is not the ensuing cheaper oil prices that has become the subject of jittery conversations but the fact that low oil prices do not necessarily mean good news overall, or so we are being told by so-called economic experts.

It is not the business of ordinary folk, however, to dabble in the intricacies and interplays of global economics. To the ordinary folk, it is what is plain that is easy to understand. And so it is that when fuel prices go up, so should transport fares, But if that is so, how come that when dieself prices were going down, the jeepneys fares stayed up. Now that diesel has gone up, fares are going down. It is hard to blame ordinary folk if they begin to suspect they are being fooled.