Press Release
April 23, 2008

Gas subsidy urged to avert possible "fish" crisis

Senate President and Nacionalista Party President Manny Villar today urged the Executive Department to extend a gas subsidy to 1.4 million coastal fishermen who are reeling from high gas prices as up to 80 percent of what they earn from their dwindling catch goes to fuel.

"Before the price of diesel shot up 260 percent from P14.90 per liter in January 2003 to an average P39 per liter last week, 51 percent of fishermen were already poor, the most in a sector," Villar said, citing a National Statistical Census Board study in 2002.

Villar, son of a shrimp vendor from Bataan, said "unknown to many, fishermen are first to feel the impact of gas price increases because the major ingredient in catching fish is fuel."

"You need fuel to power boats, to make ice that will preserve the fish, and to run the vehicles that will bring the catch to the market," he said.

Villar said unlike jeepney drivers, who are organized and have leaders who would demand diesel discounts and fare hikes from the government when gas prices inch up, "the country's fishermen suffer in silence, which government meets with silence in return."

He said a gas subsidy for fishermen is justified because what the fisheries sector produced in value was bigger than the output of all rice farmers.

"We are pouring more money in panic to the rice sector while remaining oblivious to the hardship fishermen endure everyday," he said Villar said a Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources research showed that the share of gas and oil to the total fishing expense of a coastal fisherman ranges from 31 percent, for those who use shrimp gillnet, to a high 80 percent of "drift, hook and line" fisherman.

Close to 90 percent of a shrimp trawl's expense goes to diesel while in tuna long-line fishing, 70 percent of expenses goes to the fuel bill, Villar said.

"Because fishing is an oil-reliant industry, half of the retail price of galunggong, dilis, tulingan, matangbaka, alumahan, tambakol, bisugo represents fuel expenses," Villar said, referring to the top seven species caught in municipal waters, or the body of water 15 kilometers from the coastline.

Citing the role of fish in the Filipino diet, Villar said a diesel subsidy scheme for fishermen should be put in place to prevent prices of fish from shooting up and fishermen from getting poorer.

Next to rice, it is fish that Filipinos eat most, with annual per capita fish consumption of 38 kilos in 2005. "Fish and other marine products are our primary sources of protein," Villar said. Villar lamented that there were instances when it was cheaper to buy a kilo of lamb that traveled thousands of miles by land and sea from Australia than a P250 per kilo tanguige caught off Palawan.

Even on non-prime fish, a minimum wage earner in Metro Manila now has to spend up to one-fourth of his daily income just to buy a kilo of galunggong, which the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics said was fetching P90 a kilo in 13 surveyed markets last week. Villar said government should now designate "fishermen lanes" in gas stations where "registered fishermen" can queue up for discounted diesel. The lanes can be patterned after PUV discount lanes in urban gas stations can easily be replicated.

"There are more jeepneys and buses than bancas and fishing boats and yet government was able to create a system which allows PUV drivers and operators to buy discounted diesel," he said.

The diesel subsidy for coastal fishermen should be done immediately, he said, to prevent the rice crisis from becoming "a rice and fish crisis."

By volume, total fisheries production in 2007 hit 4.712 million valued at P180.5 billion , with commercial fisheries contributing P55 billion to total value out of a volume of 1.193 million MT; municipal , P64 billion (1.304 million MT) ; and aquaculture P61.5 billion (2.215 million MT) .

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