ONE forever-Yellow opinion writer was delighted that President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. seemed to dispute the Philippine Statistics Authority’s report of a 6.1 percent June inflation when he said he “had to disagree with that number, we are not that high.” That writer even maliciously claimed that Marcos will arm-twist that PSA to change its numbers, or transfer its officials to some other post. His column’s title: “PSA to tweak 6.1% inflation for BBM?”

Obviously, that writer’s decades of writing had not changed at all his proclivity of commenting on something he really knows little about. To be fair though, I had been mainly an economic and business writer for most of my journalism career, and I know for a fact that even most reporters in this specialized beat are confused about this economic measure called “inflation.”

Okay, almost all know that inflation is the increase in prices of a chosen group (“basket”) of commodities and is measured as the percentage increase from one earlier period to a later one. For easier computation, a particular year is chosen as the “base” year with prices valued at 100 points. The PSA changed its base year from 2012 to 2018 as its base year in 2020.

INDEED, Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr.’s (PFRM) May victory was nearly a walk in the park, and as early as December last year, I wrote a column that the election in 2022 was likely to be the “first-ever boring election for two of the highest posts of the land.”

Backed up by data from surveys, I concluded that Bongbong would be getting the huge votes from Filipinos satisfied with the performance of President Duterte, as he was, even if unannounced, his political heir.

MORE precisely its repair crew’s unbelievable incompetence, or negligence, did.

Here’s what happened. The other day, at about 6 p.m., right after a thunderstorm in our village, power conked out in our part of the area. It usually does as Meralco’s corporate philosophy is: don’t fix it if ain’t broke. Never mind if many of the transformers and fuses in the area are over 30 years old and get busted in a severe rain or rush of lightning.

The repair crew did arrive at around 7 p.m., and in fact I would have even written a column praising their efficient system for reporting outages and acting on these, which is even faster than those in the banks that I use.

GREED is really the engine of capitalism, global and local, as the current worldwide de facto oil crisis shows,  in which prices soared from $70 per barrel at the beginning of the year to last week’s $120. Everyone I know is shocked over the soaring, for instance, of the regular gasoline’s  price from P50 per liter in recent memory to P85 last week. 

What few people know is that while the country groans under the weight of fuel costs, the industry continues to making a killing. Its “industry take” – mostly net profits — account for 15 percent of diesel prices, 19 percent of gasoline, 22 percent of kerosene, and a scandalous 41 percent of LPG, the poor’s fuel,  according to a study of the Department of Energy. This is way above the 2.5 percent industry take in the US oil industry. (Taxes on the other hand (excise and the value-added taxes) account for 23 percent of gasoline prices, 15 percent for diesel, 17 percent for kerosene, and 14 percent for LPG.) \

No wonder that the newest players in the petroleum-distribution business, such as  Phoenix Petroleum owned by the Davao-based Dennis Uy have become unbelievably rich in just a few years. Ramon Ang’s Petron Corp., with the biggest market share of 26 percent  has generated profits way beyond the tycoon’s expectations. Dutch-owned Pilipinas Shell and Chevron Philippines (combined market share: 26 percent)  has been remitting hundreds of millions of dollars yearly to their headquarters.