Ilonggo Live (L-R): Art Calsas, Perfecto Yap, Anton Josef Guerina, Boyet Parcon & Pet Melliza.


     ILOILO CITY (Oct, 3, 2026) Transport leaders are unsure yet whether to cheer themselves for the recent move by government to increase fares.

       One calls it "palliative" that partly cushions but not shield the public transport sector from blows brought by the series of fuel price increases. 

    Perfecto Yap, president of the Association of Taxi Operators in Panay (ATOP), said his group submitted to the Land Transportation Franchisng Regulatory Board (LTFRB) their call for P25 increase in the flagdown of taxi. Government approved only P15 without succeeding increase in the matrix per kilometer after the first four kilometers.

    Anton Josef Guerina, ATOP vice president, is not clapping his hands either for the increase in the flagdown from P50 to P65. "Passengers decrease, which means, corresponding deduction in earning," he explained. He did not cite figures.

   Yap doubts whether the future is bright for the public land transport sector. "We are in transition stage: passengers and operators are still adjusting," he said.

    Boyet Parcon, president of the Metro-Iloilo Transport Services Cooperative, which operates the biggest number of mini-buses or "modernized jeepneys", is grim: operation expenses shot up while income dips, displacing its employees, he says.

    "Before, a bus consumed P2,400 daily in fuel; today, it's P4,000," Parcon rues. "Before, a driver operated his unit six times a week. Today, we are constrained to rotate them so each drive only three days per week."

    Yap, retired regional director of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) recalls that government instituted the oil price stabilization fund (OPSF) in the 70s till the 90s, a tax from the sale of fuel which is used to prevent sharp spikes in fuel prices.

    He was referring to yonder years when the Philippines had a state-run Philippine National Oil Corporation (PNOC) which owned a fleet of tankers and a refinery named Petron which checked the vagaries of the oil cartel in the Philippines from jacking up prices at will.

    Militant groups blame government for unchecked and arbitrary fuel price increases after it gave fuel companies a free hand in dictating fuel prices sans government approval in the mid-'90s through the Oil Deregulation Law. The same law abolished the OPSF and privatized the PNOC and Petron, almost for a song.

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