Photo: Trans.INFO

Romania: agreement reached on fuel duty cut

Romania's coalition government has reached an agreement to reduce excise fuel duty by 50%. The duty cut comes amid forecasts that increases in the price of diesel in the country could reach €1.4 per litre. 

You can read this article in 2 minutes

Other countries in Central Europe have taken similar moves, with Poland scrapping VAT on fuel and Hungary and Croatia introducing price caps.

I proposed to the coalition leaders the solution of a temporary 50% reduction in the excise duty on fuel, a measure that would reduce the pump price immediately by more than 1 leu. The proposal was validated in today’s meeting,” said Adrian Câciu, Romania’s  Minister of Finance, in a Facebook Post .

After the Coalition’s proposal is validated, the Romanian Government will negotiate with the European Commission and fuel distributors “to reduce fuel prices to a level that can be borne by all consumers, whether individuals or companies”.

We all have ideas and solutions, but it’s good to be structured. The government has all the numbers, it knows exactly how much the budget is running, it knows exactly how far it can go and in what direction. Then we need to prioritize what we can do with this money. We say we need to invest. If there is fiscal space, let’s reduce the excise duty on fuels, let’s do other measures that would temporarily help, very well,” Câciu told Agerpres.

Earlier this week, carriers called on the government to urgently find solutions to stop fuel price hikes, and threatened protests in the event of inaction.  According to a Eurostat report, Romania ranks second in the EU in terms of fuel price fluctuations.