Asian consumers fear US$100 oil will add to daily
struggle
Posted: 03 January 2008 1821 hrs
SINGAPORE - From a Beijing cab driver to a vendor selling food
wrapped in banana leaves at a Jakarta roadside, life for ordinary
people in Asia is set to get even tougher after the price of oil
hit 100 US dollars.
Consumers across the region griped about the rising cost of fuel
after crude oil hit 100 dollars per barrel for the first time
during trading in New York on Wednesday.
"What can I do? I just suffer," 30-year-old businesswoman Sirintra
Vanno complained at a petrol station in Bangkok. "I have no choice
but to drive every day to go to work because public transportation
services are so limited."
Nena, an elderly woman who sells meals wrapped in banana leaves by
the roadside in Jakarta, said higher fuel prices had dramatically
cut her daily income over the past few months from 60,000 rupiah to
35,000 rupiah.
"I have to buy things at higher prices now but I cannot raise the
price of food every time kerosene rises," she said.
Hery, 54, a motorcycle taxi driver in Jakarta, said he feared
rising oil prices would lead to cuts in government subsidies for
the cooking fuel, which costs 6,000 rupiah (64 cents) per
litre.
"It will be out of reach" if the price goes higher, he said.
Australian truck driver Doug McMillan said the rising oil price was
having a devastating impact on his business, which uses trailers to
deliver farm equipment across the country's vast Outback.
McMillan said fuel costs used to account for about one-third of his
expenditure but were now 55 percent -- and rising.
"By the time you pay your drivers' wages, there's no profit left,"
he told AFP by phone as he drove one of his rigs.
Song Haisheng, a 30-year-old taxi driver in Beijing, said he too
was under pressure, adding he and many of his colleagues were
barely surviving at current petrol prices.
"In order to save fuel, many taxi drivers now would rather park and
queue along the street like this than cruise blindly as we used to
do in search of customers," he said as he queued outside an office
building in Beijing.
The Chinese government caps the prices at which refiners can sell
their products, partly shielding consumers from the immediate
impact of global oil spikes.
But it allowed refiners to raise domestic fuel prices by roughly 10
percent in November and ordinary Chinese now fear more hikes, with
even the more well-off feeling the impact of record fuel
prices.
"Nowadays I try not to travel by car when going on business trips
and instead opt for the train as much as possible," said Huang, 42,
who would only give his surname as he waited for his company driver
to pick him up in Beijing.
On the streets of Manila, taxi driver Mario Agbayani was also
worried.
"If pump prices continue to rise, I will be forced to look for
another job because what I would be earning in a day would not be
enough to even buy petrol," the 40-year-old father of three
said.
He spends 12 hours a day on Manila's chaotic roads but takes home
only 500 pesos (about 12 dollars) after expenses.
Japanese businessman Narihisa Murakami, 38, said in Tokyo that
ordinary folks were powerless in the face of rising fuel prices,
calling them "a real problem" and adding that fuel economy had
become key when buying a car.
In Singapore, freelance motorcycle courier Irwan Shah, 45, said he
tried to save by gassing up across the Causeway in neighbouring
Malaysia, where petrol costs half the price it does in the
city-state.
Another Singaporean courier, Surahman Ridwan, 52, resorted to a
more drastic solution. "I had to cut down on cigarettes just to pay
off my petrol costs more comfortably," he said. - AFP/ir