Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Gas sta­tion own­ers could face loss­es be­tween $20,000 and $30,000, fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo’s an­nounce­ment of a $1 per litre re­duc­tion in the price of Su­per gaso­line dur­ing yes­ter­day’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2026 Na­tion­al Bud­get.

Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (PDA) PRO Derek Joseph com­mend­ed the Gov­ern­ment for the price re­duc­tion, as it would bring ben­e­fits to the pub­lic. How­ev­er, he said the move had dealt a sig­nif­i­cant blow to the coun­try’s 150 gas sta­tions.

“I be­lieve that this re­duc­tion is al­ready show­ing a neg­a­tive ef­fect on the deal­ers’ mar­gins. The Gov­ern­ment said this would come in­to im­me­di­ate ef­fect,” he said.

“We be­lieve that all stock bought to­day that is not sold as yet, if the deal­ers have to sell their stock it would cost them be­tween $20,000-$30,000 on av­er­age in loss­es.

“We be­lieve that, based on this re­duc­tion of the price of fu­el which would al­so af­fect the prof­it mar­gin of deal­ers.”

Joseph said the PDA had al­ready be­gun dis­cus­sions with the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and planned to meet with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to ne­go­ti­ate a larg­er share of prof­it mar­gins for deal­ers. He added that deal­ers were be­ing taxed on their gross in­come rather than their prof­its, and called on the Gov­ern­ment to give them greater au­ton­o­my in mak­ing pric­ing de­ci­sions.

He made the com­ments yes­ter­day dur­ing the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce’s (CCIC) post-Bud­get news con­fer­ence at its Cam­den Cou­va Ad­min­is­tra­tive Com­plex. In terms of Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions, CCIC vice pres­i­dent Amit Dass said the in­crease in na­tion­al in­sur­ance rates an­nounced by the min­is­ter would have an ad­verse im­pact on small busi­ness­es, as it would raise op­er­at­ing costs for small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs).

“We will wait on the ac­tu­ar­ies’ re­view on the in­crease,” he said, adding that the cham­ber want­ed clar­i­ty on whether the grad­ual in­crease in the pen­sion age and high­er NIS pay­ments would be sus­tain­able in the long term.

Dass al­so sug­gest­ed that the mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty should con­tribute by pay­ing NIS, oth­er tax­es, and Health Sur­charge, and not­ed that the new Land­lord Tax would af­fect SMEs as well.

Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Sudesh Ramkissoon said his or­gan­i­sa­tion wel­comed the agri­cul­tur­al ini­tia­tives out­lined in the bud­get, as they could help low­er food prices and boost agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports.

“We dras­ti­cal­ly need it,” he said.

CCIC pres­i­dent De­o­raj Ma­hase de­scribed the Bud­get as a pos­i­tive one, not­ing that the planned Foren­sic Sci­ence Com­plex would sup­port the home in­va­sion bill and oth­er crime-fight­ing mea­sures.

“We have some good things to look for­ward to,” he added, point­ing out that mea­sures to im­prove on­line pay­ments would en­hance busi­ness ef­fi­cien­cy.

Ma­hase al­so wel­comed the pro­posed up­grades to the Au­to­mat­ed Sys­tem for Cus­toms Da­ta (ASY­CU­DA).