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Saturday, November 05, 2005
Capillas: Text queries and expanded VAT
By Stephen Capillas
The Lowdown
FIRST of, thank you to Globe management for taking time off to answer the "mystery" that is the rapid reduction of text load due to the series of logos, ring tones sent by them to their subscribers.
To be fair, this text load reduction is also happening to subscribers of their competition, Smart and is thus not a unique phenomenon. We could only hope that the two firms issue advisories to this effect so their subscribers would not be so inconvenienced.
This is especially significant in light of the expanded Value-Added Tax (VAT) law, which would jack up the prices of basic and prime commodities in the country.
Come to think of it they re-named E-VAT into R-VAT or Reformed Value-Added Tax. As in the old cliché of "same dog, different collar" either way it's taxes or taxes make our payslips smaller and thinner.
Already fastfood outlets have raised their prices at the stroke of midnight of October 31. It won't be long before these two telecom firms adjust their text load rates as well.
These days every centavo counts and when these centavos are lost because of the series of logos and ring tones that are not even wanted by the cell phone users their pockets become even thinner.
And then even they become the losers in the end. So these two major telecom firms should help the subscribers adjust to the times by making their own adjustments themselves. It's not like they're going to lose their market anytime soon. Cell loads have become as indispensable or nearly so to the Filipinos as oil, sugar, salt and rice. Alienating them with these obscene text loads cuts won't serve their business interests anymore than raising their rates would.
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SPEAKING of fastfood outlets an ABS-CBN report about KFC and Jollibee raising their food prices in all their outlets nationwide was driven home to this writer who had the good fortune of being treated to dinner by loved ones.
One scoop of rice at KFC which used to cost somewhere between P8 to P9 now costs P10. For those with bigger appetites but now find themselves with smaller budgets due to E-Vat -- though they still insist on eating in these fastfood outlets -- they may consider bringing their own rice if only to fill themselves up.
Kidding aside the EVAT would surely be a pain in the behind for most Filipinos trying to make both ends meet. For the rich it is simply just another dent in the pocket that can be rectified with less wage increases or worse, corruption.
More on this next week.
(November 5, 2005 issue)
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