Rising Fuel Prices: Government Brings Back the Transparency Board

Economy and Innovation Minister Delina Ibrahimaj has announced the decision to bring back the Transparency Board. She made the announcement today after the government meeting ended.

Ibrahimaj said that from the assessment of the market situation, bringing back the Board was deemed necessary, and with it the automatic mechanism of a 20% excise cut as soon as the price exceeds 220 lek.

“Our position until just recently was that we were undecided about setting it up, but the price has stood at 222 lek per liter for two weeks. Since we have made a prior decision that whenever the price exceeds 220 lek we will activate a mechanism to reduce the excise so that the price comes down, the only mechanism through which we could activate this was the re-establishment of the Transparency Board. The deadline runs until the completion of our assessment of the need to have the board,” Ibrahimaj said.

The Transparency Board was set up on March 19 this year, after the outbreak of the US–Iran conflict which directly affected hydrocarbon prices globally. The Board remained in force for 3 months, while it issued its first decision on March 26 to lower the price of diesel to 203 lek per liter.

But because prices kept only rising, on April 3 the government intervened by cutting the excise by 20% when the price of diesel exceeded 220 lek per liter and when gasoline was above 200 lek per liter. With the excise reduction, VAT was automatically lowered as well, since it is the final tax applied on the product’s price.

With the abolition of the Transparency Board, the excise reduction was also abolished, while for 2 weeks now the retail market price has exceeded 220 lek.