Palazzo Chigi and the Ministry of Economy are engaged in the final checks to put together the necessary coverage to finance the new excise duty cut against expensive fuel. At the center is a race against time: the government aims to approve the package within the next few hours, before the black dot weekend of August 1st and 2nd. To support an excise duty reduction lasting about eight or nine days, **at least 140 million euros** are needed. The goal is to intervene promptly, while prices continue to be affected by market fluctuations.
New excise duty cut
The strategy under consideration foresees two distinct steps: a ministerial decree financed through the mobile excise duty mechanism, flanked by a decree-law to find additional resources. However, the first measure can count on a limited initial endowment: the increased VAT revenues collected in June should be below 50 million euros, a figure considered insufficient on its own to guarantee a significant discount. The point, in fact, is that in June the last excise duty cut decided by the government was still in force, expiring only on July 3rd. Translated: pump prices were still partially capped and the extra tax revenue generated by the increases remained contained.
At least 140 million euros are needed
According to an analysis by the Unimpresa Study Center, reported by today’s edition of La Stampa, the amount of the decree-law would be around 100 million, combined with June’s VAT resources to reach the threshold necessary to cut diesel by 24 cents and petrol by 6, respectively. The intervention would therefore be temporary and would primarily serve to “ferry” the market until August 10th, when it will be possible to precisely quantify the extra VAT revenue accrued in July. It is here that the government expects to find the margin to extend the reductions: unlike June, in fact, July saw more marked increases – diesel +29.6 cents per liter and petrol +17.3 – which should translate into significantly higher VAT revenue.
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Prices continue to rise
Meanwhile, prices continue to rise. In the latest surveys, self-service diesel is at 2.184 euros per liter, close to the 2.20 threshold, while petrol remains just under 2 euros. And on the motorway, prices are even higher. According to Unimpresa, the total resources used this year to contain expensive fuel would rise with the new decree to over 2.1 billion euros. In a scenario that – as Paolo Longobardi of Unimpresa emphasizes – represents an attenuation and not a full compensation for the increases.
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