President Marcos has again suspended excise taxes on liquefied petroleum gas and kerosene, and the Bureau of Customs says the government will forgo at least ₱700 million a month as a result — with no end date attached this time.
"We will lose at least P700 million a month. But we understand, of course, because the times are different now, there are crises," Customs Commissioner Ariel Nepomuceno said, as reported by The Philippine Star's Bella Cariaso on Sept. 28. Finance Secretary Frederick Go said the move mirrors an earlier three-month suspension that ran from April to July and cost the treasury nearly ₱3 billion over that period.
Relief, minus the fine print
The stated goal is to cushion low-income households that rely on LPG and kerosene for cooking as global crude prices climb. Energy Secretary Sharon Garin reported that Dubai crude has topped $80 a barrel, triggering the inter-agency review that led to the suspension. Business groups, for their part, are pushing for something considerably bigger: a suspension of the 12% value-added tax on all petroleum products, not just an excise carve-out on two fuel types.
What officials have not said is when this suspension ends. The April-to-July round had a defined three-month window and a tallied cost — ₱3 billion — that the government could point to after the fact. This time, Nepomuceno's ₱700-million-a-month figure is open-ended: run it six months and the bill is ₱4.2 billion; run it a year and it's ₱8.4 billion. Without a sunset clause, "relief" is a number the public won't get to see added up until well after the money is gone.
The relief is also narrower than the crisis it's responding to. A separate Philstar report on Sept. 23 noted the Department of Finance backed excise relief on LPG and kerosene specifically, but not on diesel or gasoline — the two fuels that most directly drive transport fares and the delivered cost of everything else. Pulpulitiko reported last week that pump prices logged the year's steepest one-week jump on Middle East supply risks, with diesel up as much as ₱9.50 and gasoline up to ₱5.50 per liter, and no relief measure announced for either at the time. The LPG and kerosene suspension leaves that gap untouched.
Context
This is the second time in 2026 that Malacañang has reached for an excise suspension to answer an energy-price spike, and the second time it has done so without Congress amending the underlying excise law — these are executive-level suspensions of collection, not legislative tax cuts, meaning they can be reversed as easily as they were imposed. The pattern raises a basic accountability question for a government touting an economy already downgraded this year by both the Asian Development Bank and S&P: relief measures that show up in press briefings but not in a public ledger of what they cost and how long they last are difficult for anyone outside the Palace to evaluate.
What's still unknown
The government has not announced when the current suspension will end, nor has it said whether it will extend relief to diesel and gasoline if crude prices keep climbing. Neither the DOF nor the Bureau of Customs has published a running tally of foregone revenue from the current suspension to date.
Sources
- Bella Cariaso, "'Government to lose P700 million monthly in excise tax suspension'," Philstar.com, Sept. 28, 2026 — https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2026/09/28/2559398/government-lose-p700-million-monthly-excise-tax-suspension
- "DOF backs excise tax relief on LPG, kerosene, but not diesel or gasoline," Philstar.com, Sept. 23, 2026 — https://www.philstar.com/business/2026/09/23/2558360/dof-backs-excise-tax-relief-lpg-kerosene-not-diesel-or-gasoline
