ADDING its voice for clean air, environmental group Pollution Control Association of the Philippines (PCAPI) has joined the clamor to push forward with the shift to electric vehicles in line with the government efforts toward decarbonization.
PCAPI’s statement was in response to the earlier announcement of National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary Arsenio Baliscan that Executive Order No. 12 series of 2023 will be up for review by February 2024 amid concerns raised by several EV industry stakeholders with the exclusion of e-motorcycles in the tax break coverage of the order.
PCAPI said the tax incentives to e-motorcycles will allow majority of the Filipino population to shift to affordable and eco-friendly transportation.
“This will allow more of the majority of public access to affordable transportation… Also this can minimize what I believe [is] a major issue of pollution in highly urbanized [communities], idling in traffic,” PCAPI vice president for external affairs Jeremiah Dwight Sebastian said in an interview.
“The point here is there is a need for stakeholders and [implementers] to communicate and also capacitate enforcers to avoid miscommunication and implement this properly,” Sebastian also said.
According to the Statista Research Department, there are more than 7.81 million registered motorcycles in the Philippines as of 2022.
The Department of Energy targets to roll out 2,454, 200 EVs by 2028, comprising of cars, tricycles, motorcycles and buses. It also aims to set up 65,000 charging stations nationwide to be used by the EVs.
Philippine Business for Environmental Stewardship secretary general Felix Jose Vitangcol previously said that the EO should be revised to make it more inclusive by including motorcycles and other 2-wheeled vehicles so Filipinos from different social classes can afford to shift to green technology amid the soaring prices of gasoline.
“Only more affluent Filipinos — indeed a limited segment of the population — can afford to buy four-wheel vehicles and hence enjoy these incentives… This is why the government must make these tax incentives more inclusive,” Vitangcol said.
The shift to EVs is one of the government’s strategies to help decarbonize the Philippines and stop its reliance on fossil fuels for power generation.
