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St. John’s, Antigua, CMC – Prime Minister Gaston Browne has acknowledged that the ongoing war between the United States and Iran is having an impact on energy prices on the global market as Antigua and Barbuda prepares to increase fuel prices this week.
Browne, speaking on his weekly radio programme, said also that his administration cannot continue to subsidise the price of the commodity as it had been doing for several months in the past.
“We have not only been subsidising the cost of fuel at the pump, but we have also been paying West Indies Oil Company rather than collecting tax revenues from the company,” Browne told radio listeners.
“I want the public to understand that we normally collect between three and four million dollars (One EC dollar=US$0.37 cents) monthly from WIOC on an average. So instead of collecting that three to four million dollars per month for the past six months, roughly EC$24 million, we now owe WIOC EC$15 million,” he said.
The Prime Minister said he had hoped the war in the Middle East involving Iran and the United States would have been over by this time, but that the conflict seems to be dragging on with no clear end in sight.
He told his radio listeners that this has led to much volatility on the international markets, especially on petroleum prices, and that officials in the Ministry of Finance are advising that expected increases in fuel prices could be in the vicinity of EC$3.50 cents.
But that this would constitute too large an increase at the pump and that the government has agreed on a price of two dollars across the board.
“That was too large an increase to be implemented in one fell swoop, so we settled on a smaller increase,” Browne said, and as a result, the prices at the pump will move from the current EC$14.50 for gasoline to an estimated EC$16.50, diesel at EC$16.25 per gallon.
But Browne said that despite the increase, consumers here will be paying less for fuel than their counterparts throughout the Caribbean region.
