|
The government is open to reviewing the Oil
Deregulation Law and the possible lifting of the value-added tax, or
VAT, on petroleum products, Press Secretary Jesus Dureza said during
a press briefing on Monday.
It had taken up the country’s
Roman Catholic bishops on their proposal to revisit laws on the
economy that they said hit the poor the hardest.
Dureza said economic managers
will look into the suggestion from the Catholic Bishops’
Conference of the Philippines, or CBCP, during a Cabinet meeting
next week.
He added, though, that the
government will have to wait first for an “official statement”
of the bishops on the matter.
“Out of sympathy for the poor,
there is a need to review our [economic] laws that have to do with
the prices of goods, most especially gasoline,” said Angel
Lagdameo earlier on Monday. The Jaro Archbishop, he also is the
president of the CBCP.
Bishop Broderick Pabilllo,
chairman of the CBCP’s social-action arm, the National Secretariat
for Social Action, said the government should reconsider the
expanded VAT law. The law imposes a 12-percent tax on basic goods.
Although price discounts are
being given to senior citizens, especially to the retired ones,
Lagdameo said they also should be exempted from the expanded VAT.
“Senior citizens are given a
20-percent discount but minus the 12-percent expanded tax, the
discount actually is only 8 percent, it’s pitiful,” he added.
Dureza said Finance Secretary
Margarito Teves and Trade Secretary Peter Favila recently told him
that they had been waiting for such suggestion from the CBCP.
He noted that spiraling oil
prices also affect other countries but that Malacañang has been
trying to shield the poor from costlier oil and food.
--Angelo S. Samonte and Anthony Vargas
|
