Firefighting…
The Prime Minister made the last, it must be understood, administrative order in this regard, from May 1 to increase the rate of export customs duties on petroleum products. It is estimated that they will increase by 44%. The measure should cool the interest of oil companies in the export of fuel and stimulate domestic sales. At the same time, the prime minister instructed the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Finance to think about reducing the mineral extraction tax or excise taxes for oil industry workers.
Vladimir Putin also instructed the Federal Antimonopoly Service to propose options for the development of oil products trade through the exchange.
But state control is not canceled. The prime minister believes that a register of independent sales companies (those that exist without state capital) so that regulators have the ability to control them. “We cannot allow people to have a shortage of petroleum products at least somewhere.”
The lack of fuel and the rapid increase in its prices are likely to be stopped in many places by the government. But how soon and whether it’s all is a question. In a number of regions and regions, for example, in the central part of the Russian Federation, the situation was aggravated by the simultaneous, as if by conspiracy, shutdown of a number of oil refineries for scheduled repairs. This is not the first time this has happened. In order to avoid repetitions, state bodies, without a doubt, should introduce control over the compilation and observance of schedules providing for a “fan-like” principle of the beginning and end of repair and maintenance work at oil refineries.
The success of anti-crisis measures in the fuel retail industry also depends on how soon the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Finance make proposals to reduce taxes for oil companies, how effective they will seem to the oil companies themselves. And acceptable to their business. And if not, they will not rust behind them - they will find a way to circumvent bans and commands. Not the first time.
… and prevention
We have wonderful wisdom: the clever with brilliance will come out of the most difficult situation, the wise will not fall into it. Okay, now, hopefully, thanks to adequate Cabinet responses, everything will settle down. But can you be sure that the incident is settled once and for all?
Whenever an aggravation of the price topic related to gasoline aggravates, someone will surely repeat that the rise in price of fuel in an oil country is absurd, and the current price level is nonsense. And remember that, say, in Iran, a liter is poured at a gas station almost at the cost of soda; that in the outbreak of Libya, people with weapons expressed dissatisfaction with the regime, which kept the cost of a liter at 14 US cents …
