The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Luis Leoncio
Conclusion
The Aquino administration’s stock reason in defending the fare increases for the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) and Light Rail Transit (LRT) systems is the removal of government subsidies on utilities including the railway system on its claim the fare hike would require the entire nation to subsidize the spending of Metro Manila commuters.
The target is the removal of all subsidies so that each full trip would cost P60 for the elevated rail system, or the doubling of the already doubled P30 for an end-to-end ticket. The fares were initially increased from a maximum of P15 to P30 at the start of the year.
Senators had disputed President Aquino’s argument that the subsidy is being paid for by other than Metro Manila residents.
Most of the tax collections from which subsidies come are sourced from the National Capital Region or Metro Manila.
Citing 2010 figures, Sen. Ralph Recto showed taxes collected in the cities of Quezon, Makati and Caloocan amounting to P281.8 billion of the total collection of P337 billion from the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s 19 regions.
Recto said Quezon City’s P75.8-billion revenue collections, for instance, easily dwarfed the total of P56.2 billion collected from Bicol to Tawi-Tawi.
Subsidies on public transport are also an essential government service since efficient travel within the capital and the country’s financial hub is crucial to the direction on which the economy goes.
The Aquino adminis-tration, however, recently awarded another Metro Rail Transit (MRT) project that would traverse Manila to San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan.
Many wonder what prompted the new system called MRT-7 to have a terminal specifically in that Bulacan area.
It turned out that the planned intermodal depot in Tungkong Mangga, San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, where the MRT 7 line ends is within the hacienda of the Araneta family of Interior Secretary Mar Roxas.
For the depot to be set up by a unit of San Miguel Corp., the government would have to evict farmers who are now fighting for land-reform coverage. More than 300 hectares of the hacienda are expected to be allotted to the project.
The development of the MRT-7’s commercial and residential component will also be led by the Roxas family’s Araneta Properties in a tie-up with SM Land.
The farmers were staking their claim over the property while accusing the Aranetas of land grabbing.
With the MRT-7 government project in place, the Araneta clan of Roxas will be the main beneficiary as the value of land in the area is expected to shoot up.
For the MRT-7 project to succeed and thus assure the Araneta-Roxas clan of its economic windfall, the viability of the new mass-transport project through high fares needed to be assured as well.
The diversification of the clan into the transportation business is also questionable considering that Roxas became transportation and communications secretary with his Liberal Party (LP) wards seated in strategic posts inside the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), including Joseph Emilio Abaya, a senior LP leader.
Roxas’s LP allies were also caught dipping their hands into the anomalous MRT-3 contract for the supply of train coaches.
Czech Ambassador to Manila Rychtar blew the lid from the otherwise hush-hush deal between Roxas’s LP clique and the relatives of the President to obtain alleged kickbacks from the deal.
Wilson de Vera, an LP member who ran in Calasiao, Pangasinan, and whom Rychtar alleged to have actually asked for $30 million from him in behalf of Al Vitangcol, was tagged as the one behind the MRT biddings.
After negotiations with Rychtar failed, the P3.8-billion contract for 48 new MRT coaches, which Inekon made a bid for was awarded to CNR Dalian Locomotive & Rolling Stock Co. of China.