The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) is scheduled to raise domestic oil prices on a weekly basis beginning this month, hiking gasoline and diesel prices by NT$0.5 per liter and NT$0.6 per liter respectively effective on Saturday, local media reported yesterday.
A Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) report yesterday said that Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) made the comments on Saturday during a visit to the countryside with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Yiin said the ministry decided to have the state-owned oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) absorb the rising oil costs last Friday after taking into consideration the two recent typhoons’ impact on the public, the report said.
Yiin declined to comment on the issue when the Taipei Times called yesterday.
However, CPC told the Taipei Times yesterday that it had not received any instructions from the ministry and that it was hard to predict whether domestic oil prices will go up or down on Saturday, as international crude oil prices fluctuate by between US$5 and US$6 per barrel every day.
CPC vice president and spokesman Chu Shao-hua (朱少華) said by telephone that there were three possible ways to determine the level of a possible oil price hike later this week.
First is the point-to-point method, which compares the oil price last Friday with the price on this Friday. The advantage of this method is that nobody can guess the exact price hike, which Chu said would help prevent people from hoarding oil. But the downside of the method is that everyone will then have to take the risk, he said.
The other two options are either by comparing the average oil price last month with the average oil price in the first week of this month.
One could also compare the average oil price in the last week of last month with the average oil price in the first week of this month, Chu said.
Meanwhile, the Consumers’ Foundation (消基會) said that it disagreed with the ministry’s decision, because CPC said last Friday that it would absorb the rising oil costs, and not just defer an oil price hike.
“By doing so, it will make the public feel that the government lacks honesty and trust, which is a very serious problem,” acting foundation chairman Hsieh Tien-jen (謝天仁) said by telephone yesterday.
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