Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

"When are they go­ing to re­duce fu­el prices at the gas sta­tion?" That's the ques­tion asked by op­po­si­tion MP, David Lee, dur­ing the de­bate on the mo­tion to Adopt the Sec­ond Re­port of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee to ap­pro­pri­ate $3.8 bil­lion of ad­di­tion­al funds in­to this year's bud­get in the par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

In his con­tri­bu­tion, Lee cit­ed state­ments over the last year by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert and Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley in the par­lia­ment sur­round­ing the re­moval of the fu­el sub­sidy and the price of gas at the pumps. Based on their state­ments, he said, cit­i­zens may be over­pay­ing for fu­el- even with the sub­sidy.

Read­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's state­ments from the Hansard dur­ing Oc­to­ber's bud­get de­bate he said: "if it drops, mean­ing the bar­rel of oil, drops be­low (US)$80, Pre­mi­um drops to $6.28, Su­per to $6.05 and if it drops to $75, Pre­mi­um will drop to $5.68 and Su­per will drop to $5.43."

But with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance stat­ing the price of oil is at US$80 a bar­rel and not around US $90 as pro­ject­ed in bud­get 2022/2023 when fu­el prices were last raised, Lee now ques­tions if cit­i­zens have been pay­ing more than they should over the last sev­en months.

"The price of oil has av­er­aged for the last sev­en months (US) $79.44. So all what the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance talked about...the price at the pump when it's $80 or less- so since De­cem­ber the av­er­age price of oil has nev­er sur­passed (US)$80," he said.

There­fore, Lee said: "The price of Su­per in the last sev­en months should have been $6.09 that we pay­ing on the pump as op­posed to what we pay­ing to­day at $6.97." "That is $0.86 per litre we should be pay­ing less. Al­so, if you use the cal­cu­la­tion of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, on April 8, 2022, when he cal­cu­lat­ed the price at $80, what we are say­ing, we should be pay­ing at the pump for Pre­mi­um $6.18 per liter as op­posed to what we pay­ing now $7.75...an en­tire $1.55 (the dif­fer­ence is ac­tu­al­ly $1.57) per liter less. So I ask the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, when is he go­ing to re­duce the price at the pump," he said.

His com­ments came as the gov­ern­ment seeks ad­di­tion­al funds in this fis­cal year's bud­get to­wards the sub­sidy.

"We are here to­day to in­crease that fu­el sub­sidy by $600 mil­lion. We had al­lo­cat­ed $1 bil­lion (in the bud­get) so it's $1.6 (bil­lion). Where they use that bil­lion dol­lars be­fore to­day that they ask­ing for the $600 mil­lion. Where was that used? How they use it up?" he said.