Durigan: We ask distributors for diesel relief to be passed on to consumers

The executive secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Dario Durigan, said this Thursday, 12th, that the government asked fuel distributors that the relief in the price of diesel provided by the announced measures be “immediately” passed on to consumers.

Durigan represented Minister Fernando Haddad in a meeting with representatives of the largest private fuel distributors – responsible for around 70% of the private market in Brazil.

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The zeroing represents a relief of 32 cents per liter at the refinery, to which is added a subsidy of 32 cents per liter, totaling 64 cents per liter of relief

“We ask the distributors that all the gain offered by the government, all the impact offered by the government with the two measures – the exemption and the subsidy – be immediately considered and passed on, considered in the transfer to the final end”, Durigan told journalists after the meeting, which took place at the headquarters of the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

In addition to Durigan and the Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, the meeting was attended by the vice-president and minister of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services, Geraldo Alckmin, and the executive secretary of the Civil House, Miriam Belchior, representing minister Rui Costa.

The executive secretary of Finance argued that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has asked his assistants so that the Brazilian population does not bear the cost of the war in the Middle East. “We worked for a long time to create a mechanism that is physically neutral and effectively brings this benefit to the forefront, so that we do not feel the cost of war in our country”, he pondered.

Durigan stressed that the announced measures are fundamental to guarantee Brazilian sovereignty and stressed that, in addition to the issue of price, the issue of supply was addressed. “As the value of Brent has risen a lot, which causes all this discrepancy, it seems reasonable to us that the gain that goes beyond what was previously predicted receives this taxation that helps us stimulate domestic production, targeting the domestic market and at the same time gives us the conditions to achieve fiscal neutrality, compensation for these two measures”, he added.

Finally, he said that State bodies are strengthening supervision and asked for “the partnership of distributors so that we can have very fluid control over what public money is, be it tax benefit or subsidy and the rigor of verifying how much this public resource is reaching the end”.