Shortage of oil tankers looms

As a general rule, government should not be in business, for it could pose unfair, because huge, competition. But in cases where private firms are unwilling or unable to serve basic economic needs, government must go into business, if only for public interest.

When Philippine Airlines in its early years could not fly "missionary routes" to small cities, government bought into it and for a time subsidized losses just to keep domestic rates down. Passenger volume soon grew to encourage private investments in the missionary routes. Government then bailed out of PAL.

When Metro Manila began to boom in the late ’70s, bus firms were slow to expand their fleets. To stave off the transport shortage, government set up its own bus line. Eventually private firms picked up the slack, and government sold its buses.

When banks lent only to factories in the big city, government put up the Development Bank of the Philippines to finance agro-industrial loans. Again, private banks soon saw the prospects in rural areas and set up new branches. DBP then concentrated on lending to pioneering ventures.

It has always been that way. Government blazes trails where others fear to tread, then moves out when the rush begins. Thus did government set up two decades ago the PNOC Shipping and Transport Corp. (PSTC). Demand for fuel at the time was growing in the Visayas and Mindanao. Private shippers couldn’t haul enough because they did not have sufficient capital to expand their fleets. Besides, some islands were too dangerous to service, due to banditry, and communist and separatist insurgencies. PSTC had to cover 80 percent of the business of moving fuel, and deliver to hot spots like Jolo, Zamboanga and Basilan.

In 1994 PSTC felt it had outlived its usefulness. It was servicing only 12 percent of the demand. Private shippers had taken to leasing bottoms from abroad to eat into PSTC’s monopoly. PSTC set itself up for auction. There were no takers. For shippers, the easier money was in leasing, not in capital investments. They saw no point in acquiring PSTC’s three relatively newer ships. Again in 1997 PSTC called for bidders. Again, shippers shied away, jittery as they were with the Asian financial crisis.

PSTC had no choice but to go on. Fuel demand continued to rise, and government was pouring development into Mindanao. Too, PSTC had to protect its mother company PNOC’s investments in Petron by offering deliveries using the newer ships that met newer rules on safety and environment protection. In the past ten years, it pulled in P143 million in revenues, and pitched in P18 million to the national treasury. It kept its books clean with no subsidies or behest loans.

Meantime, the few remaining ships of private firms continued to age. More than half of their fleets are older than 18 years, and thus rejected by petroleum firms. PSTC asked them if they were now ready to buy the government firm for P124 million and continue shipping to missionary routes.

Their reply surprised PSTC: just close down and sell your ships as junk. The Philippine Petroleum Sea Transport Association and Philippine Interisland Shipping Association demanded as much from Energy Sec. Vince Perez, to whose department PNOC and PSTC report.

PSTC president Cesar Tapia is adamant. The retired general says it is ironic for an archipelago like the Philippines to have a decrepit shipping industry. Just when he is modernizing PSTC’s fleet to conform with stricter standards of fuel firms, private shippers who now dominate 78 percent of the trade want the company to just disappear.

The shippers argue that there is an oversupply of bottoms, and PSTC with its 12-percent chunk of the business is killing them. Tapia counters that, on the contrary, customers forecast a need for ten new vessels to meet their demands in the next two years. Yet in the past two years, private shippers sold 20 of their relatively newer tankers to undisclosed buyers. The vessels remain unreplaced, and thus puts the actual shortage of ships at 30. The oil firms this early are contemplating on leasing ships from abroad on their own.

The shippers are planning to lobby Malacañang for PSTC’s closure. After all, they say, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has laid down a policy of "government leaving business to the private sector alone." Sure, Tapia says, but only if such departure would not leave huge holes in the supply and transport of fuel. Otherwise, the country would be back to where it was 20 years ago, when PSTC had not yet entered the picture.

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Here’s a gift idea for Valentine’s Day. Present that "special someone" with a limited-edition album of love songs by award-winning songwriter Trina Belamide. The album title greets, Happy Valentine’s Day, but in a unique way: the carrier song with the same title won overall second prize in the 1999 USA Songwriting Competition against more than 31,000 other entries from 50 countries.

The album is available at Tower Records and Music One outlets.

Trina loves to write about love. Her 1992 piece, Now that I Have You, was the carrier single of Awit Award’s Album of the Year, Six by 6 (by The Company). In 1993 her Christmas love songs, Pasko sa Piling Mo and Dinggin Natin ang Pasko, received Awit Award nominations.

In 1994 Trina’s song, Tell the World of His Love, won the Grand Prize out of more than 80 entries as official theme of World Youth Day ’95. Millions of people sang the song in the largest gathering the world has seen – at the Luneta during Pope John Paul II’s Manila visit. It won the Katha Music Awards and Awit Awards.

Trina’s 1995 composition, You’ve Made Me Stronger, became an Asian hit recorded by Regine Velasquez. In 1996, Shine won second prize at the Metropop Song Festival. Trina again landed in the finals in 1997 with Do You, and in 1998 with No Other Man.

In 1999 her piece, No Less, was chosen out of 30 songs as the Philippine representative to the Asia Song Festival, and bagged second prize. That same year, her Life Power won the grand prize of the Philippine National Red Cross songfest, and was sung by international artists at the 27th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva.

In 2000 Trina’s Para Sa ‘Yo was one of ten finalists in the ABS-CBN’s Himig Handog sa Bayaning Pilipino. Weeks later, it was the favorite song at EDSA-II of January 2001.

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