Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Al­ready fac­ing hard­ships from the last pe­tro­le­um price in­crease, sec­re­tary of the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Saleema Sat­tar said pe­tro­le­um re­tail­ers may have no choice but to close down their busi­ness­es or fire em­ploy­ees in the com­ing months.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert made his pre­sen­ta­tion, Sat­tar said the in­cre­men­tal re­moval of sub­sidy and in­creased price of diesel did not pro­vide any eco­nom­ic gains for re­tail­ers or whole­salers of pe­tro­le­um.

She said re­tail­ers have been get­ting a fixed 12 cents per litre of fu­el since No­vem­ber 2005, so even though fu­el prices went up, there was no prof­it to be made.

Whole­salers get 14.5 cents per litre, Sat­tar said.

"Now that diesel price has gone up, peo­ple will close up their busi­ness­es. I run a ser­vice sta­tion and af­ter I pay for my fu­el, pay tax­es and rental to NP and pay my em­ploy­ees, I am left with noth­ing. It is re­al­ly a des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion," Sat­tar said.

She not­ed that the 200 per cent in­crease in Busi­ness Levy Tax af­fect­ed the gas sta­tion own­ers.

"This has pre­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant strain on our sec­tor. It is more dif­fi­cult now to op­er­ate busi­ness. With the re­moval of the sub­sidy, there should have been a way for us to make a prof­it but we can­not," Sat­tar said. T&T has 170 ser­vice sta­tions in T&T, of which 20 are op­er­at­ed un­der the Unipet brand and the re­main­ing 150 op­er­ate un­der the terms of State-owned Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Co Ltd (NP). Sat­tar called on Gov­ern­ment to meet with the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss the eco­nom­ic ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the re­moval of fu­el sub­si­dies.

Im­bert an­nounced the new price of diesel fu­el at $2.30 per litre up from $1.98 per litre ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly yes­ter­day.

Say­ing diesel in­creas­es will cause trans­porta­tion costs to jump, Sat­tar said this will mean in­creased food prices, as the ma­jor­i­ty of trucks trans­port­ing food are run on diesel fu­el.

Sat­tar said the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion was look­ing for­ward to see­ing the Pe­tro­le­um Or­der Pa­per to de­ter­mine whether there is an in­crease in the mar­gin for re­tail­ers and whole­salers.

Pres­i­dent of the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T Thack­wray Dri­ver in an in­ter­view af­ter the Bud­get said there should be a lib­er­alised sys­tem of fu­el prices. He said this would en­sure that pe­tro­le­um deal­ers got a fair mar­ket price rather than op­er­at­ing un­der a price con­trol sys­tem.