A new wave of financial pain could squeeze consumers’ pockets next week, as pump prices could be tracking new wave of increases – primarily for gasoline products, based on the initial calculation of the oil companies.

As assessed by the industry players, the price of gasoline will likely rise by P0.70 to P1.10 per liter; while movement of diesel prices is still wobbling between possible reduction or no change; and it goes the same for kerosene products.

But since there is still one day of trading remaining for the week, the oil firms are not discounting the possibility that diesel and kerosene prices would still end up on the price hike trajectory.

If reckoned on the outcome of four-day trading in the regional market, the prices of diesel and kerosene were estimated to have a reduction of P0.05 per liter, but if there would be market premium to be factored in, they could still take a reverse course for an increase of roughly P0.25 per liter.

Referencing purely on the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS) index, the calculated cost movements have been P0.713 per liter increase for gasoline products, then diesel will be slashed by P0.064 per liter and kerosene by P0.067 per liter.

Prior to this round of adjustment, a monitoring report of the Department of Energy (DOE) has shown that price swings since the start of the year still logged net increases of P4.85 per liter for gasoline and P1.75 per liter for diesel; while overall kerosene prices already went down by P6.35 per liter.

As emphasized by market watchers, the strike of hurricane Francine in the United States as well as the production shut-in in Libya have pulled prices up in recent trading days, thus, the anticipated uptrend in fuel prices.

Nevertheless, these developments in the international market have still not disrupted market fundamentals to a great extent, hence, overall cost movements have remained relatively tamed.

There is still a collision course in the lingering pricing pressure because of the unabated slowdown of major economies, primarily China, which is the second biggest economy in the world.

Filipino consumers have been on financial relief in the past two weeks due to hefty price rollbacks, but potential price hikes due to market uncertainties have come back knocking again on their wallets and paychecks.

Moving forward, what consumers would be fighting for would be transparent pricing of the oil companies so they would know exactly the cost items they have been paying for every liter of oil – and that has been recently upheld in the decision of the Supreme Court.