Member of gas Station Owners’ Syndicate in Lebanon, Dr. Georges Brax, explained via an interview with the “National News Agency” that “there is a defect in determining the selling price of the diesel plate at the stations, within the current price installation schedule, and in the previous ones, because the Ministry of Energy did not adopt the real standards and costs in the pricing mechanism.
Brax said: “The ministry has specified an amount of 674 US dollars as an individual price for every 1,000 liters of diesel sold inside warehouses, provided that transportation and the station’s fees are added to it after converting the price from dollars to Lebanese pounds. But two main factors were not included, the commission charged by the bank upon mandatory deposit of cash in dollars, for the price of diesel regarding the benefit of oil facilities, which represents 1% of the amount, and it also adopted the exchange rate of 19000 pounds to determine the price of the plate at a time when it refuses to receive the amount except In cash, US dollars, and the exchange rate in the markets is equivalent to 21,000 pounds, while the station’s comission is still 1,200 pounds.
Adding that “as a result of this situation, which cost the owners of the stations a loss of 11,000 pounds per can, they preferred not to sell diesel at their stations.”
He appealed to those concerned “to adopt the studies we presented to them and find a solution to this clear explicit problem, or return to the pricing of diesel and delivering it to the stations, in Lebanese pounds.”
Brax concluded: “Again I will point out to the danger of Banque du Liban’s failure in securing the dollar for the necessity of importing gasoline, and in the event of its occurrence, we will face the same crisis with the possibility of queues returning to the streets.”