Oil prices down! Food prices are still up…why?

It’s not a secret and in fact it’s a no-brainer that the Philippine economy is robust today, not because of the economic policies of the Aquino regime, but rather to the poverty of our people. Filipinos who cannot find jobs here in the Philippines have to find those jobs abroad and indeed many have gone abroad to earn their living. The Filipino worker is so valued in foreign countries to the point that even in a difficult financial year, the September remittance of our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have risen to $19.6 billion up by 8.1% or $2.3 billion from last year.

Because a great majority of Filipinos are God fearing (yes both Christians and Muslims), I have always believed that God has given us poverty so we have to search for those lucrative jobs abroad and, because most Filipinos are Catholic, they end up missing home and more often than not, serving in many churches in their host countries.

Yes, when I was in Qatar, I saw a good number of Filipinos serving their Catholic communities. So in the end, we unknowingly evangelize those countries especially in Europe where Catholicism is waning. Yes, this includes their wards in many Muslim countries, who end up knowing our Lord Jesus Christ. So those OFWs are in turn blessed with the money that they send back home to the Philippines and our government rewards them by calling the OFWs our “new heroes.” But in my book, the best reward that the government ought to do is give them good governance and speedy justice, especially for those who stole the people’s money. Many of them are Senators and Congressmen and should face a well-deserved jail term!

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The bigger news, which unfortunately doesn’t get into the headlines of our national dailies, is that oil prices have been slashed seven times this year alone and reaching record lows. The latest to cut oil prices are of course the so-called Big Three oil giants, Petron Corp., Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. and Chevron of Caltex. Their price per liter is now down by P.80 per liter for gasoline, while diesel prices are down by P.50 per liter and kerosene prices down by P.35 per liter.

So the big question that people have asked me… if the economy is very much dependent on the price of oil products, why then are jeepney, bus, ship and airplane fares not going down? In fact if you looked into the prices of basic commodities in your nearest public market or in the supermarkets… the prices of basic commodities have not gone down as we all expect them? Why is this happening to our country?

Surely the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) can give us a reasonable explanation as to why the law of supply and demand isn’t working anymore. There is no doubt that the world’s oil production has remained steady and the demand for oil hasn’t really gone up. But with shale oil being added into the equation… there really is more oil in the world market that is readily available. All this is happening even when there’s a civil war going on in Syria and Libya has remained unstable. In the end, the United States has emerged as the biggest oil producer, which is why oil prices are going down. 

With our fishing industry very much reliant on the pump prices of fuel, the question comes to play as to why fish prices in the local markets haven’t gone down yet. Like it or not, prices of basic commodities should go down with the oil prices, yes including all transportation fares. So why isn’t this happening? Calling DTI or NEDA to explain this to the Filipino people.

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How time has flown indeed. Last Oct. 15 and Nov. 8 were the first anniversary of the Cebu-Bohol earthquake and Super Typhoon “Yolanda” respectively. But few Filipinos remember that yesterday was also the first anniversary of the infamous ruling by the Supreme Court (SC) that declared the Priority Development Assistance Program (PDAF) as unconstitutional. This was the case filed by my good friend, Greco Belgica against the Philippine Government and on Nov. 19, 2013, the SC defined and clarified that all forms of discretionary and lump sum budgeting except for a limited calamity and contingency fund is a crime.

So it’s been a year since the SC came up with this ruling virtually telling the Filipino people that those Senators and Congressmen who monkeyed with the PDAF a.k.a. pork barrel have for all intents and purposes committed a crime. So let’s sound the alarm bells to the Office of the Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales whether she has started to investigate those who abused and misused the public funds from 1991 up to the present time? Kudos to Greco Belgica for this great victory. As Sir Winston Churchill used to say, “Never have so many, owed so much to so few.” Thank you Greco!

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