Instead of easing the heavy fiscal burden on fuel, the government announced that it will add two new fees to the price of diesel and gasoline. These are the tracking fee and the one for creating a national security reserve.
Prime Minister Edi Rama declared that fuel tracking will be given as an exclusivity to Albtrace, a joint company between the state and the Arabs.
"We have created a new public company, in partnership with the United Arab Emirates, with their company with the same objective, which is called AlbTreis. It is a public company that will track all excise products with technology and soon Albtreis will enter the market with its first two products, which are related to tracking and tracing oil," said Edi Rama.
According to him, tracking will be used primarily for fuel transit, eliminating the possibility of oil declared for re-export being sold on the domestic market.
"This new product is absolutely undetectable by any eye other than the manufacturer's magic eye, while tracking means that we will end the era of accompanying oil entering Albania with the objective of being in transit and we will track it from afar without disturbing your drivers, who when they set off to cross the border have customs officers behind them who pollute the environment by also using fuel purchased from the state budget," the prime minister added.
Albtrace is a company where 51 percent of the shares are owned by the Albanian state, while 49 are held by a Saudi company called O & S Security and Solutions, which replaced the fiscal stamp concession. Apparently, the government has already decided that this company will also enter the fuel market, thus partially restoring the branding concession. But the entry of this company will impose a new fee, which citizens will pay in the price of oil.
But while the tracking fee is expected to be relatively light, the one for creating the national reserve has a bill that goes over 300 million euros.
"Within 2-3 weeks, the draft law on the reserve will be approved by the government. It provides for the creation of a special agency and now the hydrocarbon security reserve will no longer be held by hydrocarbon trading entities, but will be held by the State Agency, which will deposit it in its own or rented deposits. By creating a minimum 90-day deposit of the product in the country to have complete and total hydrocarbon security," declared Energy Minister Enea Karakaçi.
This is a table showing the amount of reserve that will be created in the first year. The current market price of oil is around $1,250 per ton, and securing 240,000 tons has a direct cost of $300 million. This money will be secured through the imposition of another tariff on the price of oil, which will likely be considerable.
However, this is not the only cost. In parallel, the public company will have other costs, including renting storage facilities. Currently, the cost of renting fuel storage facilities is at least 10 euros per ton per month, which means an additional cost of 25 million euros per year.
These two tariffs add to the record heavy burden that Albanians pay on fuel, which will increase prices even more.
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