Work and leisure travels will come easier in the pockets of consumers next week, as domestic pump prices will be on hefty rollback by Tuesday (March 21), based on the estimates of the oil companies. As calculated by the industry players, the price of diesel products will be slashed by P1.80 to P2.20 per liter; while gasoline prices will be trimmed by P1.40 to P1.70 per liter. Kerosene, which is the other essential commodity in the weekly price swings, will be down by P1.85 to P2.15 per liter, according to the oil firms. The fresh wave of adjustments, as anchored on regional pricing reference Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS) fundamentally followed the crash of prices in the global market on last week’s trading days. Prior to the forthcoming round of cost movements, a monitoring report of the Department of Energy (DOE) has shown that price adjustments since the start of the year logged net increase of P6.70 per liter for gasoline; while motorists using diesel will have a more propitious fate as this product posted overall cost downtrend of P1.00 per liter; while kerosene had a net reduction of P1.65 per liter. For crude futures trading in the international market, the price of benchmark Brent crude settled at a low of $72 per barrel as of Friday (March 18) trading; plummeting from a higher base of $83 to $85 per barrel in the past week. As emphasized by experts, the main factors which contributed to the slump in global oil prices had been the collapse of two major banks – the Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse which posed questions on the integrity of the financial sector. Nevertheless, it was noted that the sagging prices may already bounce back soon following the signals given by major global oil producer Saudi Arabia as well as Russia - that they are willing to ‘intervene’ to help shake off the recent market disruptions. So far, that is seen by experts as well as market watchers as a new development that could lead to rebound in global oil prices in the trading days ahead. As it is, the episodes of oil price rollbacks would be greatly beneficial to the consumers because this will increase their purchasing power at the pumps. And on the bigger core of the economy, it will ease inflationary pressures on the costs of basic commodities as well as services. Additionally, for the transport sector, the drivers of public utility vehicles (PUVs) would be able to earn more from hard day’s work of bringing passengers to their various destinations.