Transporters will ask the Government to extend aid for diesel until June

Professional transport will place a proposal on the new Government’s table to extend the extraordinary allocation to fuel for six more months. The claim, which the sector has been making since the anomalous rise in fuel prices last summer, is accentuated as the deadline for the portfolio recently assumed by Óscar Puente to decide whether or not to extend the aid that expires with the arrival of the of the new exercise.

“We have requested a meeting with Transport to propose that the aid be maintained until June 30, 2024,” Juan José Gil, general secretary of Fenadismer, the federation that brings together more than 32,000 transport companies and more than 60,000 vehicles in our country. The employers’ association, which plans to meet – along with the remaining transport associations – with the Executive in the coming weeks, supports its decision in the modification of the crisis time frame authorized from Brussels.

In order to deploy their anti-crisis aid packages, the Member States of the European Union need a special state aid framework from the Commission. The space, which was to end on December 31, was extended until March of next year in the context of uncertainty with energy prices and tensions in the Middle East. However, last week, the Community Executive endorsed the proposal of a good group of Member States and extended the aid window for the most affected sectors to cover half of next year.

This measure supports the claim of a sector that has had to deal with a de-escalation of subsidies, sometimes out of step with the high prices dictated by the market. Without going any further, the last subsidy cut occurred in October and reduced the reduction from 10 to 5 cents per liter of fuel consumed, despite the fact that the price of diesel – the majority fuel in the sector – was trading at unprecedented levels of from February (1,693 euros per liter).

Two months later the situation has turned around and fuel prices are involved in a downward trend. Along these lines, the price of diesel has now been declining for eight weeks and has dropped to 1,558 euros per liter. However, it will be the evolution of the market between now and the end of the year that will set the guidelines for the negotiations between the industry and the Government. “Depending on how prices evolve, we will ask for more or less intensity in aid,” explains Gil.

Both parties will strictly monitor a price that depends on multiple factors such as its specific price, the cost of raw materials and logistics and gross margins or the evolution of crude oil, the value of which is not directly transferred to the prices of the products. fuels, but does so with a temporary sticker.

The Government will wait until “the last moment”

The hot potato will remain in the hands of a Government that “has not made the decision” and will wait until “the last moment” to determine if it is necessary to extend this social shield again based on revenue collection and the evolution of prices, as as the Secretary of State for the Treasury, Jesús Gascón, announced two weeks ago in a conference organized by the Association of Economic Information Journalists (APIE). There it was explained that the new life of the anti-crisis aid package will depend largely on the tax collection accumulated at the end of the year.

It should be noted that Fenadismer opted for caution when the sector had to face the aid cut last October and preferred to wait for the political blockade to be cleared to formalize its request to the new Government. As they explained to this newspaper, they decided to act with caution because “it was not an urgent situation”, since the reduction in the allocation did not really begin to be collected until November.