(Adds PL statement)

Opposition leader Simon Busuttil will tomorrow be meeting the social partners within the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development to discuss fuel prices.

In a statement, the Nationalist Party noted it has been insisting with the government to reduce prices for weeks and the price of oil was now down to $44 a barrel.

The Opposition noted that a number of members of the MCESD, including the Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprices, the Union Haddiema Maghqudin, the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association, and the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, had spoken out about the matter in public and requested the government to hold an MCESD meeting to discuss it.

The government, the Opposition said, should reduce prices immediately and stop playing with figures to try to give the impression that Maltese families and businesses were not paying among the highest rates in Europe.

Maltese families and businesses had been among those paying the highest prices in Europe for months, it said.

In a reaction, the Labour Party said the PN today made another mistake which reflected its economic amateurism.

For it said that the price of oil had now gone down to $44 per barrel when it was yesterday $48. This meant that, according to the Opposition, it went down by 8.3 per cent in one day.

Reality was that the price of oil had today gone up to $49.65 a barrel, which was a 1.1 per cent increase. But the Nationalist Party mixed the price of Brent crude with that of West Texas Intermediate, which was used by American markets and was not the price of oil in European markets.

Had the Opposition conducted its research well, it would have realised that Brent crude had not been $44 per barrel since March 2009.