Skyrocketing petrol. The billboard operation wanted by Adolfo Urso to make the price of fuel more transparent, helping motorists to choose the most convenient petrol station, it started exactly one week ago, but in the same days petrol and diesel registered a real surge, of over 3 cents per liter for green and 5 cents for diesel. To speak clearly are the official data collected by the Ministry of the Environment on the basis of the weekly price trend. Between July 31st and August 6th, coinciding with the obligation to display average prices that began on August 1st, petrol prices at self-service outlets reached 1.929 euros per litre, the highest for a year now, and those of diesel at 1.796 euros per litre. The most up-to-date numbers of Quotidiano Energia, which are instead based on the daily surveys of the Ministry of Enterprise’s Observatory, are even higher: petrol in self-service mode is on average at 1.936 euros per litre, diesel at 1.816 euros per litre. Levels that have not gone unnoticed by consumers and which have also attracted the attention of the opposition. Among the ranks of the Pd, Tatiana Rojc accuses the government of “whistling” in front of the increases, “ignoring it”.
“The gimmick of the cartels with the regional average price has had zero or opposite effect, – denounces the dem senator – the government doesn’t even have an idea of how to curb the rises and families are impoverished”. In the 5 Star Movement Chiara Appendino instead he defines the executive’s short-sightedness as “grotesque”, denouncing “the obstinacy in not wanting to intervene on excise duties” and sounding the alarm on the competitiveness of the Italian productive fabric, “compared to those EU countries such as Germany which are intervened”. Reproducing the cut in excise duties experienced during the Draghi government is a hypothesis that the Ministry of Economy has actually already ruled out, due to “lack of preconditions”, given that the price of oil at an international level, as recently explained by the undersecretary Lucia Albano, does not deviate from the value of the Def so much as to trigger the tax reduction. Consumer associations are on the attack.
The Unc speaks of “sting on holidays” and of “yet another speculation on the exodus of Italians”. In just one week, calculates the association, a full 50-litre tank costs 1.56 euros more for petrol and even 2.52 euros for diesel. In just two weeks, the crucial ones for those who are going on holiday, a liter of petrol costs almost 7 cents more, with an increase of 3.5%, equal to 3.26 euros for a full tank, while diesel is higher by almost 9 cents per litre, with a leap of 5.1%, equal to 4.34 euros per supply, 104 euros on an annual basis. «Motorists – asserts Assoutenti – are facing a drain, demonstrating that billboards with average prices alone are not enough to block speculation. We need to intervene on the formation of the price lists, in the various stages of the supply chain, from extraction to sale at the pump”, underlines the president of the association Furio Truzzi.
Consumerism, on the other hand, follows Appendino’s appeal. «The government must intervene as soon as possible, with an urgent decree to be adopted before August 15 to order the cut in excise duties on fuel: a reduction in excise duties of 10 euro cents per liter (12.2 cents also considering VAT) would suffice. – says the president Louis Gabriel – to determine a net saving of 6.1 euros when full, which would allow Italians to save around 200 million euros only on the cost of refueling during the August counter-exodus».