The Foreign Investors Association (FIA) is asking for a 22.9 percent review of the specific commercial margin in the retail market for oil products.
In a letter sent to the Parliamentary Commission on Economy, Budget and Finance, FIA notes that this margin has not changed since Q2 2021, although under the Oil Products Market Act, the Agency for Energy Regulation (ANRE) may revise it if factors unforeseen at the time of the previous approval occur. From Q2 2021 and up to now, a margin of 2.62 lei per liter of fuel is in effect; the FIA proposes to raise it by 0.6 lei to 3.22 lei per liter. FIA notes that according to data from the end of August, the annual inflation rate in the country reached 34.29%, and according to the forecast of the National Bank at the end of 2022 will be 29.5% per year. Inflation has entailed a significant increase in costs and reduced economic efficiency of companies operating in the market of retail sales of oil products. Because of the inflation growth wages in the industry increased by 14.7%; transport costs increased by 65.1%; energy costs - by 59.8%. Because of this since the beginning of the year the necessary conditions for the development of profitable economic activity were not provided, which had an extremely negative impact on the financial stability of this important sector so for the economy. The armed conflict in the region and the accompanying energy crisis caused a sharp increase in the cost of goods and services. That against the background of large-scale transformation of transport and logistics activities in the region led to a rise in the cost of transporting petroleum products by more than 50%. The difficult financial situation in the sector did not allow adjusting the size of salaries of more than 8000 employees of the sector, which is accompanied by the departure of qualified specialists and high turnover of staff. The appeal stresses that the sector, which is experiencing the deepest crisis, is no longer able to solve these problems on its own, which lead to severe consequences. FIA considers one of the measures for overcoming the crisis in the sector to be revision of the specific commercial margin on the market of oil products. // 28.09.2022 - InfoMarket
