At a time when Albanian citizens pay the highest fuel prices in the world according to purchasing power and many voices have called for the easing of the heavy fiscal burden, the government warns the opposite. Prime Minister Edi Rama returned to the oil crisis again, this time from unit number 4, announcing the return of the famous fuel branding concession, where the state will be a partner with a company from the Emirates. According to Rama, this time the branding will have better paint than the previous concession.
"It was an inherited concession, we tried to fix it, but it was paint that was easily diluted. Now, together with the public company that we have created, we have created another public company together with the same company that the state has in the United Arab Emirates, we will release another dye that is unmanipulated. This will help a lot to formalize the oil market until the end. Because there is a quantity of oil that is off the state's radar," said Rama.
The Prime Minister is probably not well informed about the technical details. But the branding concession is not coloring and there is no paint. It is simply a marking that is made through a molecule, the formula of which is kept secret by the concession company. This is because oil cannot be colored.
But these are technical details that the head of government is not interested in at all, because the end justifies the means and in this case, the end is the return of a predatory concession. And not just one. In parallel, the prime minister also warned about another concession, that of tracking transit oil.
"The other thing that happens with oil is the so-called transit oil, which enters Albania to go to countries that are on land borders with Albania and then remains in Albania illegally. For this too, we have a product with the same company, where the Albanian state has the majority of shares, to track all the transit oil that has been tracked by cars until now. These will have their positive impact," the prime minister added.
It is not known exactly what the state-owned Arab company will do about tracking. By international law, transit goods are not allowed to be touched by the countries they pass through, as they are products of other countries. The only control that the transit country makes is that of verifying the seals.
But despite this, both marking and tracking will add two new tariffs to the huge mountain of taxes that Albanians pay on fuel. And at a time when citizens are demanding tax cuts, the government is hitting them with two new taxes. Meanwhile, a third is on the horizon, that of creating a strategic reserve, which has a bill of 300 million euros and which it is not known how it will be managed, since the reserves are held in crude oil, but the refinery in Albania went for scrap.
"We have a problem with oil. But oil is a problem everywhere, because of the war. I have said before that we will enter the oil market with a public company. We will enter to guarantee that citizens, our fuel consumers, are not forced to pay more than they are entitled to and to ensure that the reserve... This is also a coincidence because the law on the strategic reserve that the state must maintain is also in the consultation process," the prime minister concluded.
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