The government doesn’t really think about cutting excise taxes on petrol. “It would cost a billion a month, 12 billion a year”warns the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, explaining that these funds have been used “to cut the tax wedge twice” and that the executive intends to do it again with the next budget law.
Yet, it is remembered from many sides, this majority had promised in the electoral campaign the cut or the elimination of this tax. The government thus blocks the request from consumers and the opposition to lower fuel taxes. The prices of which have been stable for three days, with variations of thousandths, assures Mimit. It’s true, the cost of petrol is stable but still remains at high levels, particularly on the motorway where self-service green is at 2.019 euros per litre, diesel at 1.928 euros.
It will therefore be a dear counter-exodus what many motorists are about to do who should fill up before entering the motorway in service stations where prices are lower, with the various differences between regions. The cheapest self-service green is found in the Marche region with an average price of 1.924 euros per litre, the most expensive in Puglia and Basilicata (1.968 per litre).
In the province of Bolzano the highest price at 1.982 rose from 1.977 yesterday. Urso announces that “the Ministry of the Economy is preparing the maneuver that will be aimed at the structural cut of the tax wedge to relaunch business and work and allow those with lower wages to have a decent income”.
Therefore, “millions of motorists will pay taxes to finance wedge cuts”, says for example Osvaldo Napoli, of the national Action secretariat. The minister continues to defend the provision which has imposed the display of regional average prices, for greater consumer protection. And he pins the blame for the price increases on OPEC+, the cartel of Arab countries allied with Russia which has begun to cut production to drive up oil prices.
“From 1 October to 31 December”, adds Urso, the “anti-inflation quarter” will start which will see “regulated prices on a selection of items included in the shopping cart”, penalized by the increase in the cost of fuel because 88% of the goods travel by road. Inflation, the minister explained again, “has been halved since the launch of the transparency decree which also gave more powers to the Price Guarantor “whose clear mission is to intervene in favor of citizens and in particular the most needy”. Mister Prices can do little concretely if not report critical situations to the government, and so on the one hand it is the checks by the Guardia di Finanza that highlight irregularities which are fined, as today in the Veneto region where twelve fuel distributors with irregular prices have been sanctioned for a total of 50 thousand euros by the Provincial Command of the yellow flames of Vicenza.
On the other hand, it is consumers who burst into the field, such as Codacons which filed a complaint in various Italian prosecutors’ offices “against the Ministry of Economy and Finance for embezzlement and speculation from insider trading, with warned against freezing the 2.2 billion euro of excise duties forfeited in the last week alone; and, at the same time, against the pumps and wholesalers who have speculated on the holidays of Italians over the past few weeks”. Altroconsumo reports that over 103,000 citizens have signed the online petition to ask the government to restore the discount on excise duties and reset the ‘VAT on fuels, with the aim of neutralizing the “unacceptable” price increases on petrol and diesel. Until the beginning of this year, the discount on excise duties was in force, an extraordinary measure which, although not as effective as the zeroing of the Vat, he had given motorists a bit of breathing space”. But it was the time of stratospheric gas prices, now back.