The president of ANCAP, Alejandro Stipanicic, defended the new mechanism for fixing fuel prices that was established during the current government, and valued it positively.
“We see it well. There are three situations that lined up in favor of ANCAP’s results: higher sales volumes, an exchange rate that is putting downward pressure that benefits us, and high refining margins. All this generates a certain slack for ANCAP, but despite this, it was shown that in coordination with the Executive Power, a substantial reduction in fuel prices has been transferred to the population and ANCAP’s finances have not suffered ” , said the chief in an interview with the newspaper The country Posted this Sunday.
And he added: “The most important thing is that ANCAP and the government have not taken advantage of this opportunity to capture a huge monopoly rent for their own benefit, as the oil companies have done worldwide. The prices for sale to the public have been coordinated in such a way as to never transfer 100% what happened in the world, but also taking care to never compromise ANCAP’s finances”.
He later explained that, in the monopoly market, so far this year, the state entity had barely earned US$6 million as of September of the more than US$3 billion in sales it has made.
Regarding the evolution of prices in the coming weeks, he announced that consumers should expect a downward adjustment: “If the trend of recent weeks continues, what the population has to wait for is an adjustment to the drop in fuels. Why can’t you tell yet? Because in the international market anything can happen, but once it begins to correlate that the decisions are technical and the exceptionality of the political decision is always in favor of the population and not in favor of the finances of ANCAP or the State, That’s where you’ll earn that trust.”
He concluded by saying that, in his opinion, the price adjustment of naphtha (gasoline) and diesel (diesel) should be every week: “A greater frequency of adjustment means smaller, less traumatic (price) adjustments. It also supposes an induction to a healthier competitive practice at the level of the points of sale”.
