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Pamalakaya’s forecast coincided with protests across France against high gas prices, staged by French farmers and fishermen who blocked oil terminals and shipping traffic on the English Channel to demand government help against soaring fuel prices.
Pamalakaya national chair Fernando Hicap said around 177,627 small fishing boat owners and operators across the country would be compelled to put aside their motorized boats and quit fishing because of skyrocketing increases in the prices of petroleum products.
Hicap said small Filipino fishermen would then join the massive army of reserve labor, at a time when job scarcity is already a problem in both rural and urban areas.
In the Philippines, small-scale fishers use regular gasoline currently pegged at an average of 50 pesos to 55 pesos per liter (equivalent to US$4.35-$4.77 per gallon). Many of them blame the Philippine government and oil cartels for forcing them to work double time to provide food for their families – and to provide profits for the American-owned Chevron, Dutch-owned Pilipinas Shell, the American-Filipino group Petron Philippines, and other oil companies.
Weekly increases in the price of petroleum products have become a nightmare for small fishermen, workers and operators in the transport sector, and the 88.5 million Filipinos who face hikes in the prices of basic commodities and social services due to the higher cost of petroleum.
A Pamalakaya study found that owners of small motorized fishing boats who employ two or three fishermen could no longer bear the rising prices, and might be forced to reduce working hours per fishing operation from an average of eight to 12 hours, to four to six hours.
The same study reveals that small Filipino fisherfolk use at least five to 10 liters of regular gasoline, costing 250 to 500 pesos, per fishing operation. An average catch is five to 10 kilos of fish, which are bought by fish traders and merchants at an average price of 50 pesos per kilo of fish.
One solution would be for Manila to repeal the Oil Deregulation Law, which allows oil companies like Petron Corp., Shell and Caltex Corp. to jack up prices of petroleum products.
Another proposal is the immediate removal of the 12 percent expanded value added tax (E-VAT) and other regressive taxes imposed on petroleum products. After repealing the deregulation law, the government should proceed with the nationalization of the oil industry to make it service-oriented, rather than super profit-oriented. These measures could be taken in less than a month if the government had the political will to confront the oil cartel and address the oil crisis.
The Manila-based consumer group Kontra-KulimVAT said the government earns daily revenues of 5.5 million pesos (US$125,000) for every 1 peso average increase in the prices of petroleum products.
In 2007, the Department of Finance said the government collected 29 billion pesos ($659 million) from the E-VAT tax on oil and 11.4 billion pesos ($259 million) from power, for a grand total of 40.4 billion pesos ($918 million).
The government said the amount collected from E-VAT was used to finance projects to support the poor. But last year, the poverty rate swelled to 85 percent, according to the independent think tank Ibon Philippines – an indication that the government and its officials were busy enriching themselves rather than aiding the poor.
Kontra KulimVAT said the delivery of social services and improvement of Filipinos’ lives were not considered in the equation when the government imposed the E-VAT on oil. It said the main purpose of the regressive tax on petroleum products was to assure the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that the Philippine government could produce enough money to pay its obligation to foreign creditors, fund bureaucratic corruption and justify perpetual increases in prices of petroleum products.
As for the Filipino fishers, there are proposals for organized fisherfolk groups to stage a series of nationwide actions against the government and the big oil companies to pressure them to stop their profiteering and other forms of corporate manipulation and exploitation.
One proposal is to launch a nationwide fish strike, where Filipino fishers will not fish for a given period of time unless the government and the oil cartels agree to lower prices of petroleum products, remove the of E-VAT and other levies imposed on oil and repeal the Oil Deregulation Law.
The possibility of a nationwide fish strike in the Philippines is always there. It will depend on whether organized groups will provide political leadership to harness the growing anger and agitation among the 88.5 million Filipinos and rally them against the high prices of petroleum products.
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(Gerry Albert Corpuz is a correspondent of Bulatlat.com, an alternative Philippine online news site. He is also head of the information department of Pamalakaya, a national federation of small fisherfolk organizations in the Philippines. His website is www.gerryalbertcorpuz.motime.com, and he can be contacted at themanager98@yahoo.com. ©Copyright Gerry Albert Corpuz)
