Diego Mora | March 26, 2026
Malacanang appears to be on a “teka-teka” mode in scrapping both the excise tax and the VAT on petroleum products. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed Oil Excise Tax Suspension Law or Republic Act No. 12316 on Wednesday night, March 25, 2026, but he actually suspended the “suspension” for a date no one could divine.
This is the second time that Marcos Jr. froze any relief for motorists, drivers and consumers. Earlier, Malacanang shot down the already puny P1-increase in minimum fares, causing universal annoyance among drivers. The so-called P5,000 “ayuda” for tricycle and TNVS drivers was also criticized for being a pittance in the light of the fact that worldwide, Investor Sight reported, the Philippines had the highest increase in diesel prices at 81.6%, followed by Nigeria at 78.3%, Malaysia with 57.9%, Australia with a 52.1% price increase, 45.9% in Vietnam, 44% in Singapore, 41.2% in the US and 36.9% in Canada.
It appears that the Palace is not even sure how the law would ease the people’s pain as the Iran war instituted by the world’s worst rogue states—the US and Israel—has caused the world’s worst oil crisis, the kind that experts like Paul Krugman, Jeffrey Sachs and others regard as being worse than the 1973 crisis. By saying that he will exercise the powers vested in him by RA 12316 at the “best time,” he left unsaid the very conditions that the law was supposed to alleviate. RA 12316 amended Section 148 of the National Internal Revenue Code (NIRC) of 1997.
It appears that Marcos Jr. will still rely on the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) and the secretary of energy before he could suspend or reduce the excise taxes on fuel under Section 148 of NIRC. This reduction or suspension will happen only when the average Dubai crude oil price based on Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS) reaches or exceeds $80 per barrel for one month preceding the issuance of the suspension or reduction order. The suspension will not last three months. In short, there cannot be any reduction unless these conditions are met, or when the country’s oil inventory goes kaput by the end of April 2026.
In the past few days, the Palace has been assuring the public that there is enough fuel, with the Department of Energy (DoE) claiming that the inventory would be sufficient until the end of April, excluding the crude oil from Russia that recently arrived and presumably purchased at a lower price. In countries like Japan, the curbs on thermal coal plants have been lifted to reduce dependence on Mideast fuel. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), coal-fired power plants contributed 62% of the total energy output of the country in 2024. Despite Semirara island producing coal, the Philippines depends on Australian and Indonesian coal for its power generating plants.
The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) said Marcos Jr.’s declaration of a state of energy emergency does not provide immediate relief to 115-million Filipinos for the simple reason that the administration does not control the oil industry and cannot supervise the storage and distribution of crude oil, diesel, biofuels and other petroleum derivatives. The declaration of emergency under Executive Order No. 110 (EO 110) doesn’t provide any concrete action to reduce consumption and neither does it allocate fuel efficiently. “It shifts the burden of the global oil crisis, caused by US–Israel imperialist aggression against Iran, onto ordinary Filipinos, while leaving intact the very policy framework that produced the country’s vulnerability in the first place,” Bayan argued.
EO 110 is completely silent on the immediate and urgent need to control runaway prices and bring down fuel costs for commuters, transport workers, farmers, fisher folk and poor families. Bayan said the order and RA 12316 operate within the ambit of the Oil Deregulation Law and a deregulated, privatized energy industry. What is needed is for the state to address hoarding, profiteering, and supply manipulation due to the crisis. The oil oligopoly is a state within a state, much like the US-British corporation that controlled the Iranian oil industry since 1908 until Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized it as the profiteers siphoned 84% off from the profits and left the crumbs of 16% to Tehran. In 1953, the US and UKL ousted the elected Mossadegh in a coup d’etat and restored the corrupt monarchy.
Curiously, the oil crisis for which the US and Israel must reimburse Filipino consumers exacerbates the dire situation of Filipino workers and farmers as the Marcos Jr. administration has not approved the national living wage of P1,200 and doubled irrigation fees in the Ilocos Region, the Marcos bailiwick, further reducing the incomes of toiling peasants. The people cannot expect the Marcos Jr. regime to check the corporate impunity of the oil industry, which has earned a huge windfall by collecting soaring prices for the oil that they purchased at lower prices before Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu launched an unprovoked war against Iran. The entire world suffers for what the American and Israeli pirates did on Feb. 28, 2026. It is time for Marcos Jr. to bill Trump and Netanyahu for the economic disaster they have wrought.
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