Iloilo Trisikad Drivers Pay the Dubai Premium While the Excise Relief Debate Stalls in Congress

The safety valve that was supposed to cushion Iloilo and Bacolod drivers from a fuel-price spike was written into the TRAIN law, and it expired years ago. Republic Act No. 10963 tied its fuel-excise suspension provision to a narrow window of scheduled increases, and once that window closed the clause went inoperative. So a trisikad driver in Jaro buying gas by the liter has no automatic brake to lean on when crude climbs, and the relief lawmakers keep debating has not been extended into anything that reaches his tank.

The gap is not a mystery of missing law so much as a decision nobody has made. Proposals to revive or extend fuel-tax relief have surfaced in Congress before, but a proposal is not a signed measure, and a lapsed clause does not spring back to life on its own. Relief that reaches the pump requires someone to act, on their calendar, not the pump's.

What the old law never did

The suspension language people still cite from the TRAIN law was never a general off-switch for fuel excise. It was pegged to a specific set of scheduled rate hikes, and the Department of Finance has consistently treated the fixed per-liter taxes that ride on every purchase today as separate and untouched by that provision. When the window lapsed, so did the only formal cushion built into the statute.

That matters because the fixed excise on gasoline, diesel, and kerosene stays on every liter regardless of what crude does. There is no built-in mechanism that trims the tax when Dubai spikes, which means the entire burden of a price surge lands on whoever is buying, in the amounts they buy.

Who eats the gap

A habal-habal rider working the Bacolod public market runs on daily fuel math, not quarterly budgets. When the per-liter cost climbs, there is no fare board to adjust and no dispatcher to absorb it. The driver eats the difference, raises an informal rate and loses passengers to the guy who didn't, or cuts trips.

Pantawid Pasada, the fuel subsidy meant to offset exactly this, moves on its own clock. The DBM releases the funds, the LTFRB validates the beneficiary lists, and the cards or cash reach drivers who are often not in the franchised categories the program was built around. Trisikad and habal-habal sit in a gray zone. Many are unregistered and unfranchised, which means they never appear on the LTFRB roster the subsidy runs on.

The peso does not wait for Congress

Behind the excise math is the import bill nobody in Manila controls. Middle East supply jitters keep Dubai crude twitchy, and a weak peso against the dollar means every barrel lands more expensive before a single centavo of Philippine tax is added. Western Visayas gets its refined product shipped in, so inter-island bunker costs stack another layer that the excise debate never touches.

Transport groups have argued for years that relief keyed to franchise records misses the informal riders who make up much of the daily short-haul market in the Visayas. The subsidy design keys to who Congress can name, not to who feels the price first.

A lapsed clause is not the same as a plan

Letting the suspension provision expire without a replacement leaves the pump exposed with nothing standing between a global price move and a driver's wallet. Reviving relief would take a fresh measure through both chambers, a signature, and then the machinery to release and disburse it. None of that is fast, and none of it is running right now.

The trisikad driver pedaling an extra passenger to the Iloilo terminal at the old fare is covering the gap while all of that waits somewhere upstream. He is not on the Pantawid roster, and no automatic relief kicks in for his tank. He is paying the difference between a valve that lapsed and a fix that has not come, one short trip at a time.