The Moldovan Parliament has registered a draft amendment to the Law on the Oil Products Market, designed to help improve the situation on the market with the sale of fuel and the establishment of fair prices for it.
As the PAS deputies who prepared the bill said at a briefing on Wednesday, this document is intended to eliminate the problems that arose in the market after the parliament adopted amendments to the Law on the Oil Products Market on the initiative of Deputy Alexandru Oleinic, since his bill was approved with many conceptual errors, which created a number of problems. Thus, due to editorial errors, this law excluded the right of economic agents to import petroleum products, large consumers, including agricultural producers, were deprived of the opportunity to purchase fuel at lower wholesale prices and were practically forced to buy fuel at gas stations at standard prices. In addition, the current version of the law provides that the operators of the oil products market, which set fuel prices taking into account the NAER margin, must have access to Platts quotes, but not all economic agents can access them, since this service costs more than 1 million lei per year. Another problem was the disappearance from the sale of some fuels with additives of higher quality. The termination of their implementation deprives the budget of important revenues. As it was noted, along with these problems, two more regional challenges arose - the explosion at the Petromidia refinery in Romania, which significantly reduced the production of oil products in the region, as well as the growth of oil prices, and in light of these problems and challenges, the situation on the oil products market in Moldova risks destabilize even more unless urgent action is taken. To this end, the PAS deputies propose to adopt amendments to the Law on the Oil Products Market in order to eliminate the existing problems and preserve the mechanism for limiting prices for oil products and provide access to fuel at fair prices. The authors of the amendments suggest that Art. 4 of the Law on the Petroleum Products Market, which regulates the formation of prices, contained a new edition and the new wording would clearly and unequivocally indicate that the maximum retail prices for basic petroleum products are set by NAER based on the Methodology for the Calculation and Application of Prices for Petroleum Products. Vladimir Bolea also pointed to the disappearance of certain types of fuel from the sale due to the restriction of prices for petroleum products that have properties that exceed those specified in European and national technical specifications, and which represent more diversification of the range or marketing tactics than the basic need of consumers. In this regard, the draft law prepared by the PAS deputies stipulates that only the maximum retail price of the sale of basic petroleum products of the standard type (A-95 gasoline and diesel fuel) will be calculated and published daily on the website of NAER. As a result, the wholesale fuel market, as well as retail prices for the sale of liquefied gas and all other types of basic petroleum products, except for basic ones, will become completely free. Retail sale of other types of petroleum products than those for which the maximum price is set will be allowed only if sold at the same station and products of the standard type.It is planned that in these conditions the state will provide consumers with oil products of urgent need at regulated, reasonable, transparent and non-discriminatory prices, easily comparable, respecting the established quality parameters, and on the other hand, will provide the opportunity to freely choose alternative products. The bill is also intended to correct another mistake, which actually provided for the basic rights of the importer provided by a license for this type of activity. Thus, in order to soften the conditions for obtaining the proposed license, it is proposed to reduce the obligatory storage capacity by 5 times, which the importer must have, from 5 thousand to 1 thousand cubic meters. As Vladimir Bolea explained, this reduction is the result of the following consideration: in addition to tanks with a capacity of 50, 100, 200 400, 500 thousand cubic meters, at present, many tanks with a larger capacity of 1000, 2000, 3000 and 5000 cubic meters are used and maintained. If the obligation to own tanks less than 1000 cubic meters of petroleum products is reduced, then large tanks will fall into the risk category when they become unnecessary, and, therefore, the storage infrastructure may deteriorate. Thus, 1 thousand cubic meters - will be a compromise option to facilitate the entry of new participants to the market and, on the other hand, to preserve the existing fuel storage park. In addition, it is proposed to eliminate the need for mandatory ownership of equity capital in the amount of at least 8 million lei, since this minimum size prevents a larger number of economic agents from entering the market and creating competition. The bill establishes that NAER can adjust the commercial margin in the event of factors that could not have been foreseen earlier, and will be able to intervene in the margin structure of no more than 10% of the average actually registered by the operators.//11.08.2021 — InfoMarket.
