Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine Discussed Fuel Prices
On November 17, the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine held a council with participation of representatives of the State Fiscal Service, Ministry for Energy and Fuel Industry, main participants of the petroleum products’ market and industry experts represented by the President of Ukrainian Oil & Gas Association Dmytro Kulik and the Head of Ukrnaftochempererobka Mykhail Mindresku.
The reason to call for the council was concern of the controlling authorities regarding the latest increase of fuel prices and the willingness to prepare a detailed analysis of the situation. The state authorised representative of the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine Valerii Poliukhovych has specifically stressed, that at present the Committee does not see any reasons to initiate investigations regarding collusions of market players, though it is interested to study objective factors and trends, which cause the growth of gas and diesel fuel prices.
Representatives of the business community provided their comments on the situation, making a point on dependence of retail prices from the world-market quotations and foreign exchange instability in the country. The latest increase of commodity-exchange quotations has reached its maximum for the last two years, and it could not be ignored by the Ukrainian market heavily dependent on imports.
Besides that, the Ukrainian Oil & Gas Association and its members believe, that in autumn there was a postponed price increase state. The gas price at gas stations had to grow in average by 2.70 UAH/l, and the diesel price — by 2.21 UAH/l; though actually it has increased by 1.66 UAH/l and 1.67 UAH/l respectively. The market operators, which expected that the oil prices grew only for a brief period of time, attempted to postpone the increase of retail fuel prices as long as possible, because it would significantly reduce the purchase power of clients in the current situation, but finally they were forced to respond to the change of market situation.
At the same time, experts and market operators agree that in the near future the gas and diesel fuel prices in Ukraine will slightly increase once again. The Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine has promised to monitor and control this situation.
