Hefty price spikes at the gas pumps next week

BY MYRNA M. VELASCO

Sep 16, 2023 07:42 AM

  

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AT A GLANCE

• As noted by industry experts, the unabated rally in prices were not just due to lingering supply pressure on the production cuts and export curbs of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its ally-producers (collectively known as OPEC+) – primarily the impositions of Saudi Arabia and Russia; but also renewed forecasts of reinforced demand for China.

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With successive cost spikes already running on its 11th week, the consumers’ drive to the gasoline stations will mimic another episode akin to squeezing blood from stone as petroleum prices will incur hefty increases next week, based on the calculation of the oil companies.

According to the industry players, the price of gasoline will go up by P1.70 to P2.10 per liter; while diesel prices will surge by P2.20 to P2.60 per liter.

Kerosene, which is the other commodity in the triumvirate of weekly price adjustments, will also rise significantly by P2.00 to P2.40 per liter, as estimated by the oil firms. 

The new wave of price hikes will be implemented on Tuesday (September 19); and it will be anchored on the Mean of Platts Singapore (MOPS), an index of traded fuel commodities in the Asian region which has been adopted by players in the deregulated Philippine downstream oil industry as reference on their weekly price adjustments.

Prior to this round of price hikes, a monitoring report of the Department of Energy (DOE) has shown that cost movements since the start of the year already logged aggregate upticks of P15.50 per liter for gasoline; P11.10 per liter for diesel; and P7.94 per liter for kerosene products.

According to global experts, the unabated rally in prices were not just due to lingering supply pressure on the production cuts and export curbs of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its ally-producers (collectively known as OPEC+) – primarily the impositions of Saudi Arabia and Russia; but also renewed forecasts of reinforced demand for China.

Market watchers noted that both the manufacturing as well as retail sales in China have been logging favorable data, and that sparked off sentiments in oil markets of probable supply tightening in the weeks and months ahead. 

As of Friday (September 15) trading, international benchmark Brent crude drastically climbed above $93 per barrel, and that has been re-igniting fears of $100 per barrel oil swamping oil markets in the remainder of the year. That was a remarkable jump from last week’s $89 per barrel level.

Further, the OPEC has reiterated projections of oil demand growth for 2024 – and that is seen reaching the scale of 2.25 million barrels per day, to be propelled by faster economic recovery in many major economies of the world.

The foreseen acceleration in demand will provide counterweight to the lingering dilemmas of some countries on rising interest rates and inflationary impacts on their basic costs of goods and services.

In the Philippines, the din of protests in the streets still circles around the niggling bid of the public transport sector for fare hikes as they face continued financial distress from weekly price upswings at the pumps. 

Senate bill on mental health and well-being

  Managing a health problem that can’t be ignored

BY MANILA BULLETIN

Sep 16, 2023 00:03 AM

  

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Quietly and without fanfare, the Senate passed on third and final reading last Sept. 11 Senate Bill No. 2200, or the Basic Education Mental Health and Well-Being Promotion Act. 

The measure was initially filed by Sen. Cristopher Go and principally sponsored by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian.  Both senators said the  Senate’s approval of the bill would provide a new lease in life for the Filipino youth suffering from mental health challenges.
“This is not just a piece of legislation; it is a lifeline for our young learners in the face of a mental health crisis that cannot be ignored,” said Go, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health.

The Senate's green light on this bill could not have been more timely, as it was done a day after the observance of the World Suicide Prevention Day, which is Sept. 10.

The bill aims to establish a Mental Health and Well-Being Center in both public and private K-12 schools. It also supports the Department of Education’s (DepEd) learning recovery plan and creates new permanent positions for guidance counselor and guidance associate.

Mental health disorders are the least understood among diseases.  A mental illness is a physical illness of the brain that causes disturbances in thinking behavior, energy or emotion, making it difficult to cope with the ordinary demands of life.  People tend to attach negative stigma more on mental disorders than on regular non-communicable diseases, complicating the problems of treatment and prevention. 

Medical research is starting to uncover the complicated causes of these diseases which can include genetics, brain chemistry, brain structure, trauma or having another medical condition, like heart disease.

Topping the list of mental conditions are anxiety disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, generalized anxiety and specific phobias.  Included here are mood disorders such as depression and bipolar depression, schizophrenia and eating disorders. 

Science and modern technology have succeeded in some measure to fight these illnesses, which if left untreated could lead to suicide, the ultimate existential question that ends it all.

Social upheavals and natural disasters such as the Mt. Pinatubo eruption and the Covid-19 pandemic can cause mental diseases to rise.

The World Health Organization (WHO) considers mental illness as something that should concern all of humanity.  Thus, the Senate made the right move in passing Senate Bill 2200.

The bill also proposes to raise the salary grades of guidance counselors, a move that will attract more qualified professionals to these positions. 

It also mandates educational institutions to conduct an awareness campaign on mental health issues giving special emphasis to issues like suicide prevention, stress handling, mental health and nutrition, and guidance and counseling.

The WHO said there is no health or sustainable development without mental health, which is too important to be left to the professionals alone. 

Mental health is everyone's business, and the Senate bill inching forward to becoming a law is an important step toward the goal of good health for all.

Is "Austrian" a language or a dialect?

 

Harald Havas

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Following

Author in Vienna, Austria (about.me/haraldhavas)

Is "Austrian" a language or a dialect?

The question is surprisingly easy to answer: Austrian is a language of its own – a standardized written language and one of several standard varieties of the German language. In many text programs such as Word, you can select Austrian as your document language. It also has it’s own IETF language tag: de-AT.

German as a whole is a so-called pluricentric language with several standard varieties. Thus, Swiss Standard (or High) German (not to be confused with Schwitzerdütsch) differs lexically and grammatically from both the Federal German variety codified for Germany and from Austrian Standard (or High) German. Likewise, Austrian Standard German shows differences to the other two.

For example, in written Swiss High German, the letter ß does not exist, and is replaced by ss. There are also numerous differences in written language in Austrian High German - including in the areas of word formation, conjugation, grammatical gender, spelling... These are taught in Austrian schools as correct written language .
There are also independent high-level language words that only appear in one of the three standard varieties.

Independent high-level Swiss words are called Helvetisms (parkieren vs. [ein]parken, Velo vs. Fahrrad), Austrian words Austriacisms (Trafik vs. Tabakladen, Erlagschein vs. Zahlschein) and federal German words Teutonisms (Grundschule vs. Volksschule [AT], Primarschule [CH], bohnern vs. wachsen [AT], blochen [CH]). There are of course many differences in the kitchen language (lamb's lettuce – D: Feldsalat, Ö: Vogerlsalat, CH: Nüsslisalat).

The differences in the standard varieties are therefore roughly equivalent to the differences in other multivariate languages such as English (American English, British English) or French (French in France and Canada, among others), Spanish, Portuguese…

As for the question of the dialect, Austrian isn’t one. Rather, there are a large number of dialects spoken in Austria, some of which even belong to different dialect groups (Alemannic, Central Bavarian, South Bavarian) and differ greatly from one another.

At best, there is an all-Austrian tonal coloration, which, to put it simply, may sound a little softer than German German, especially with regard to the pronunciation of consonants. But that is independent of the codified differences in written and spoken high-level language.

The Austrian language is a recognized official language in Austria, South Tyrol and in all EU bodies. It is also a recognized minority or ethnic group language in Italy, Hungary and Slovakia.

(Swiss German is also the standard language in Liechtenstein.)

In fact, the interpreters and translators of the EU had to be retrained for the German language when Austria joined the Union. Not least because there are clear differences in Austrian official German opposite federal German expressions (Bürgermeister = Oberbürgermeister, Klubobmann = Fraktionsvorsitzender, Angelobung = Vereidigung, in Evidenz halten = vormerken).

So, should Switzerland (or Liechtenstein) ever join the EU, further follow-up training would probably be necessary.