00:00Thank you for joining us.
04:55Mas mababa doon yung mga oil companies magbabayad into the fund.
05:00Kapag tumaas doon, they would be compensated.
05:02That's how the mechanism would work.
05:05And with proper management and timing of domestic petroleum price adjustments,
05:11payments into and out of the fund should balance out over time.
05:15In theory, ganun.
05:21Yung OPSF, naging gatasan, cash count ng gobyerno.
05:28Especially when it found itself saddled with large fiscal deficits.
05:34And noong 80s and early 90s, madalas yun during the time na nagkaroon ng OPSF, 1984.
05:43So, when the OPSF was in surplus, the government would dip its fingers into the fund
05:51that was solely meant for the gas price smoothing mechanism.
05:55So, pinapakialaman nila yan.
06:28The government consistently failed to adjust petroleum prices upward
06:34when it was time to do so.
06:35Why? Because politically unpalatable, you'd risk pissing off many people.
06:42Especially during election season.
06:45Leading the OPSF to run into huge deficits in billions of pesos.
06:55The system discouraged further investment in petroleum refining
06:59as oil companies got burned by long delays in OPSF payments
07:03to compensate them for losses when world prices were high and rising.
07:07Believe me, please.
08:27And of course, no, syempre, yung disadvantages nga, we're feeling that right now, no, na pagka merong ganito, sa pool
08:35tayo.
09:04They want to offer immediate relief.
09:07It's very tempting now to go back to where it was, no, na yung presyo daw, no, stable, okay, back
09:21in the day, no.
09:21If we go by basic economic principles, that there are going to be trade-offs, that there is no free
09:30lunch, that for every benefit that you enjoy, someone has to foot the bill, someone has to pay for it.
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