RP to probe oil price hike

RP to probe oil price hike

MANILA (AFP): The chief aide of Philippine President Fidel Ramos said here Saturday that he favored a probe into oil companies raising their prices and called for a special law to address alleged collusion in pricing.

Presidential Executive Secretary Ruben Torres said "we have to press the oil companies to look into the pricing because it has become very, very suspicious, even to the untrained eye... when they all increase oil prices by the same amount and at the same time."

"I think what we should do here is to have a law passed to prevent this," Torres said, adding that this could be contained in an "anti-trust, anti-monopoly law" which was before Congress.

He was reacting to calls by Congressmen and leftist groups for a rollback in gasoline pump prices which were raised by an average of four percent on July 31 due to the peso's plunge against the dollar last month.

The price hike was made possible by an oil deregulation law passed earlier this year, ending the government's longtime control of oil prices.