The GRTU said this afternoon it failed to understand why the Consumers’ Association makes wild and defamatory statements with regard to petrol station owners.
Yesterday, the association questioned the agreement reached between the Malta Resources Authority and petrol station owners and said that never before had trade sectors been compensated to reach the required standards.
It said it seemed that the deal would ultimately see the people covering most of the costs for petrol pumps to be upgraded.
But the GRTU said the statement was “full of misinformation in a futile effort to discredit GRTU as the national representative of micro, small and medium businesses”.
It said that the price of petrol and other fuels was government determined through the Malta Resources Authority (MRA), the reason being that there still existed one dominant supplier.
This meant that the profit margin of petrol station owners as retailers of fuels is fixed.
While in a free market petrol station owners would negotiate the price with the supplier, estimate the cost of their service up to the standards established at law and set the price to consumers, in Malta this could not be done without reference to the MRA.
The GRTU said that this time round, besides the standard costs increase exercise, a special additional exercise needed to be effected due to the new EU regulations, enacted so that consumers and the community were better protected and offered a better overall service by petrol stations.
Heavy new investment, needed to be bought by each petrol station, an investment per petrol station determined by the MRA at €26 million.
GRTU members already committed more then €6 million from their own pockets and the MRA, Enemalta and GRTU have agreed on the roadmap that would lead to an agreement.
“It maybe that some costs in the whole supply change will have to be reviewed or it may be that prices have to be upped...”
“The important thing is that things are not done haphazardly or as CA insinuated by collision between a monopsony (GRTU representing all resellers of fuels) and a monopoly (Enemalta Corporation) without the intervention of a public regulator (MRA) that protects consumers.”
On gas distribution, the GRTU said distributors operated under a licence and according to conditions awarded to them under a legally binding contract.
As successors of Enemalta Liquigas knew about this contract.
Referring to the €25 deposit which had been introduced to induce customers from unnecessarily hoarding cylinders, the GRTU said that most households never paid this amount for their cylinders.
The GRTU said it believed that in giving customers returning a cylinder without a receipt €5, Liquigas was being fair and Easygas’s way out of the hurdle was to lower the deposit on its own cylinders from €25 to €5 and make it easy for customers who so desired to switch supplier.
Easygas should also think seriously of giving consumers a better price on their cylinders and provide the 12kg cylinders, the one that most consumers bought.
GRTU said that while it was always willing to explain to all when contacted, it could not waste time with bloggers, and others who just hit out at the GRTU emotionally.