DUE to the increasing cost of commodities, Gov. Hilario Davide will meet with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) 7 today to discuss plans to convene the Provincial Price Coordinating Council.
Davide said he wants to know if the matter can be addressed.
Aside from basic commodities, Davide said bus fares are slated to go up after learning that Vallacar Transit Inc., the operator of Ceres Bus Lines, raised their fares last week.
While he understands that some bus companies needed to increase their fares to offset the effects of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (Train) law on fuel prices, Davide called upon them to hold it off as even their passengers are suffering from it as well.
“I’m planning to meet with the bus operators after my meeting with DTI,” he said.
Aside from Davide, Capitol officials are also expected to increase their yearly budgets, particularly for fuel, to cope with increasing fuel prices.
Provincial Budget Officer Danilo Rodas told SunStar Cebu that next year’s appropriation for fuel expenses will slightly be higher compared to this year’s P20-million appropriation.
He said that each department can either use surplus funds or realign some budgets to fit fuel consumption.
Jonathan Cielo, head of the Capitol’s Fuel Depot, said that some departments have already fallen short of their annual fuel allocations, and are asking for additional fuel subsidy.
Adjusting budget estimates
The Cebu City Government is also feeling the crunch of the Train Law, or Republic Act 10963.
Department of General Services Chief Ronald Malacora said they need to realign P9.1 million of funds from their office to cover fuel purchases in the last three months of the year.
Malacora, who also serves as chairman of the bids and awards committee for goods and services said the City has a P90-million budget for fuel, oil and lubricants to cover the more than a thousand city-owned vehicles and those owned by the police, fire department, maritime police and barangays for the whole year.
However, the budget for diesel is only up to November while the budget for gasoline is only up to next month, he said.
He said the City consumes 180,000 liters of fuel every month.
Malacora said that when they made the budget preparation for this year, the price of diesel was P37 per liter while the price for gasoline was P47.
The prices of diesel and gasoline have gone up by P10 since then, he said.
“When we prepared the budget for this year, we really did not expect that the Train Law would make a big impact on our procurement. Now that we are preparing the budget for 2019, we estimated the base price of diesel at P47 per liter and P57 for gasoline,” he said.
The Department of Engineering and Public Works also asked for an additional budget of P45 million as prices of some ingredients for asphalt have gone up. (JKV, RVC)