Quezon City 2nd district Rep. Precious Hipolito Castelo has joined the continuing calls from legislators for President Duterte to allow for a special session as a response to the fuel price crisis.
Through a potential special session, Congress would be able to pass legislation on the proposed suspension of excise taxes on diesel, gasoline, cooking gas, and other oil products.
Castelo said President Duterte needs to call Congress to a special session so that such measure could be passed “in a few hours, since it is a simple, uncomplicated proposal".
“If such legislation were in place, fuel taxes would have been suspended because the cost of crude has already shot up to $130 per barrel due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” she said.
She noted that this automatic tax suspension mechanism was contained in Section 43 of the Tax Reform Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Law. Unfortunately, The provision only applied only to the years 2018, when the law took effect, 2019 and 2020.
“I could not recall the reason for limiting its application, but we could revive such mechanism to provide immediate comfort and help to our people whenever the cost of crude hits $80 per barrel,” added Castelo, who is a vice chairperson of the House Commitees on Metro Manila Development and on Inter-Parliamentary Relations and Diplomacy.
She said pump prices of oil products could go down by the amount of excise taxes whose collection would be temporarily shelved.
“This means that prices could decrease by P10 per liter for gasoline, P6 per liter for diesel and P3 per kilogram for liquefied petroleum gas or P33 per 11-kilogram cylinder,” she said.
More importantly, the reduction in pump prices of fuel would have a similar domino effect on prices of goods and services, Castelo noted.