MANILA – Diesel and gasoline should be selling below P40 per liter if not for the excise taxes slapped on fuels under the Duterte administration’s tax reform program, Laban Konsyumer Inc. said Tuesday.
“Hinahatak pataas ng excise taxes ang presyo ng produktong petrolyo kahit pataas o pababa ito. Doble naman ang presyo kung pataas,” Laban Konsyumer President Vic Dimagiba said in a mobile message to reporters.
“Dapat mababa na sa 40 pesos ang gas at diesel. Ang rollback sa pamasahe at presyo ng pangunahing bilihin ay naudlot dahil sa excise taxes na may patong na 12 percent VAT (value-added tax),” he elaborated.
GMA News Online has reached out to the Department of Finance (DOF) on this matter, but no response has been received as of this posting.
Data from the Department of Energy (DOE) showed diesel has been selling from P38.70 to P46.10 per liter as of June 11, 2019 and gasoline from P46.99 to P53.22 per liter.
Signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte in December 2017, the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) took effect on Jan. 1, 2018 – imposing a P2.50 per liter excise tax on diesel from zero, and hiked the levy on gasoline to P7.00 per liter.
The law also provided that starting 2019, excise taxes on diesel will increase by a total of P4.50, and on gasoline by P9.00 under the second tranche of the TRAIN law.
In November 2018, the economic managers of the administration recommended that President Rodrigo Duterte suspend the second round of excise tax increases in light of accelerating inflationary nvironment at that time.
However, they took back the recommendation in light of decreasing crude prices in the world market as well as the rollbacks in pump prices.
Duterte heeded the proposal last December and gave the go-ahead for the full implementation of the tax reform law.
“Eto ang isang tax reform program sa susunod na Kongreso, ang pagbalasa sa TRAIN Law na pasakit sa mga higit 10 milyon mahihirap na Filipino,” Dimagiba said. (GMA News)
