Friday, February 11, 2011

Fuel: postponed approval of the reform

Continues the work of the Government on the reform proposal in the fuel sector in early 2010 by the undersecretary at the Ministry of Economic Development Stefano Saglia. The draft Saglia points to four main goals that should adjust the final price of the Italian network to those of the EU average, a reduction of the distributors (in recent years become more than 24 000), greater transparency on prices, the increase of Iperself (with additional discounts at certain times or in particular time periods of the year) and self-service, the liberalization of non-oil products (shops, tobacconists and bar connected to the distributors).

The February 9 meeting of the Council of Ministers, which should have led to the approval of the draft law on competition (which also contains the draft of the measures on fuel distribution) ended with a reference that did not like to Fuels Managers, who are not satisfied with the form it took the bill.

"It is now clear," said the co-ordination unit Faib (Italian Federation of independent gas stations) and Fegica CISL (Federazione managers fuel plants and the like), ready to strike if the bill is approved as is, "how the Government intends to restrict itself to introduce laughable and ineffective (prices per week, less than one thousandth of the price shown, incentives for plant closures that there will be, self-service machines open at night-day), just to satisfy needs and communicational media.

In no way involved on structural inefficiencies in the sector (refining and foremost), the separation of the networks (modeled on the electricity market or gas) and the constraints that still hinder competition in the sector, such as requiring operators to obtain supplies from the exclusive ' oligopoly of the big oil companies and deny them access to a free market of managers.

" For these reasons, the coordination of the manager has asked to meet with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced a press conference for next week, which will be presented alternative proposals for reform. The Economic Development Minister Paul Romans, for its part, has promised a meeting with the coordination unit and Faib Fegica: "If we were talking about," he said, "we could clarify." Outside the chorus of protests instead the voice of Luca Squeri, President Figisc (Italian Federation of fuel service station operators), which is not part of the coordination unit for which "the reform will make the network more modern."

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