The government assured on Saturday that it will monitor fuel prices given the recent increases. pledging “a willingness to act to protect families” if “absolutely necessary.”
“We are evaluating and we have to evaluate what will happen from the point of view of price evolution, whether we are at an exceptionally temporary peak that will then return or whether we are not,” Finance Minister Fernando Medina said at the end against the Portuguese journalists. of the meeting of European Union Finance Ministers, taking place this Saturday in Santiago de Compostela as part of the Spanish Presidency of the EU.
The government official stressed that the Portuguese executive “has already demonstrated its capacity and willingness to act to protect families, when it becomes absolutely necessary.”
When asked if the government was considering taking action now, Fernando Medina said: “We will, if necessary, [mas] now we need to understand whether this is a peak dynamic (…) and the markets (…) indicate significant price declines soon.”
“When prices rose sharply, the government took a series of measures, especially regarding the abolition of the carbon tax, but it was always assumed that it was a temporary measure,” he recalls.
Moreover, Fernando Medina continued, “when prices started to rise significantly in recent weeks, the process of increasing the carbon tax was interrupted and therefore there is no question of an increase in the tax burden.”
This position comes after the government decided in early September to leave unchanged this month’s petroleum product tax rebates of 13.1 cents per liter on diesel and 15.3 cents on petrol, and the suspension of the carbon rate update.
The measures in force include the discount on the ISP corresponding to a reduction in the VAT rate from 23% to 13%, as well as the compensation, through the tax on petroleum products, of the additional VAT revenue resulting from the increase of the price of fuels.
Source: DN
