Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) – Oil firms implemented another fuel price rollback for the eighth consecutive week.
As the first minute of Tuesday (August 11) ticked by, Petron, Pilipinas Shell, Seaoil, and Flying V slashed the prices of gasoline and diesel by 45 centavos per liter and kerosene by a peso per liter.
Phoenix, Eastern Petroleum, PTT, and Total also reduced the prices of some of its products.
Motorists welcomed the cuts.
Francis Guzman, for one, said that, before the price cut, a full tank of gasoline in his car would last for five days. That’s just for his trip to and from the office, including a side trip fetching his kids from school.
With the price cut, he said, his full tank would probably last for a full week.
Same thing with Erwin Salvador, who uses a motorcycle when going to his work as a kitchen staffer.
His P50 expenditure for unleaded diesel could now go an extra mile.
From three days, his fuel would probably last for four to five days, according to his estimate.
Both Guamzn and Salvador, however, saw these developments as only temporary.
“Usually, when prices go down, they would go up again, depending on the market,” Guzman said in Filipino.
“It goes down and then it goes up. The cycle just repeats itself,” Salvador said.
But other drivers of public utility vehicles said the cuts didn’t make much of a difference.
Bien Yu has been a jeepney driver plying the Kamuning-Timog route in Quezon City for almost two decades.
With the slumping pump prices, Yu said he was earning earning more after his boundary — from P350 to P500 a day.
But Yu said higher food prices offset his gains.
Taxi driver Mario Bognot shared Yu’s sentiment.
After giving his P1,400 boundary to his operator, he now had P1,500 to take home daily, compared to the P800 he would make before the series of cuts.
He lamented, however, that he could earn even more if only he could avoid the horrendous traffic in Metro Manila.
Just like other taxi drivers, Mario said he would want a return of the flag-down rate to P40.
This will compensate loss in earnings once pump prices spike again.
