ST JOHN’S, Antigua – Opposition Member of Parliament for St Philips North Robin Yearwood said the drop in fuel prices doesn’t go far enough and called for greater transparency in the pass-through mechanism.
The price at the pump for gasoline and diesel will go down from today as part of the pass-through mechanism for fuel prices.
The price of gasoline is now $14.99 per gallon down from $15.80 while the price of diesel is down to $15.20 per gallon from $15.75, while cooking gas remains stable.
However Yearwood, who is the Opposition Antigua Labour Party (ALP) spokesman on energy and public utilities, is not happy with the decrease and argued that it does not go far enough.
“When you look at what the price is at now it should be much, much more than 81 cents, I believe it should be double or even triple 81 cents,” Yearwood said.
The MP also argued that the pass through mechanism needs to be made easier to understand and more transparent for the general public.
“This type of an attitude from this government is not in keeping with transparency or people first. We had this large increase some time in May or June and we were promised at that time there would be a further look at this mechanism and the impression we had it would have gone down some time in June. This is now the end of October and we are told we are going to have an 81 cents decrease in gas and a 51 cents decrease in diesel, that is not how a pass-through mechanism works,” Yearwood said.
Fuel prices reached their highest ever level in May this year when gasoline hit $16.45 per gallon and diesel $15.75 per gallon. Gasoline then fell in June to $15.80 per gallon.
At the time of the increases in May crude oil prices on the international market has risen above US $111 a barrel while WTI Crude Oil is now under US $94 a barrel.
However, Minister of Finance Harold Lovell has repeatedly pointed out that the pass-through mechanism does not work in real time since there is delay between current day-to-day oil prices on the international market and the price for which the latest shipment of oil on island was bought.
