Official: Russian antitrust seeks flexible excise duties on fuel

MOSCOW, Sep 26 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service has proposed to introduce a system of flexible excise duties on fuel, which can be revised every month, to stabilize a tax policy in the energy sector, the service’s Deputy Director Anatoly Golomolzin told PRIME in an interview released Monday.

“We always speak about a necessity to introduce the system of flexible excise duties. The government gave such an order during the discussion of this issue by the government commission for the fuel and energy complex,” he said.

The regulator will send relevant proposals to other government bodies in the near future, he said.

An excise duty is a third tax, which could be revised flexibly along with duties and the mineral extraction tax (MET), Golomolzin said.

“Unfortunately, so far it is being revised unpredictably and occasionally either growth or reduction happens immediately. This is a hardly predictable figure, meanwhile, this factor can have a significant impact on the level and dynamics of prices,” he said.

“We suppose it should be tied to the market conditions as other parameters. And the excise duty could be changed each month on the same principles as the MET and duties,” Golomolzin said.

A tax burden in the industry should be stable and should gradually decrease, he said.

The retention of excise duties on gasoline and diesel fuel in 2017 at the level of 2016 will not have a significant impact on Russian prices, Golomolzin also said.

“If excise duties remain at the level of last year in 2017, this will be a factor which will have an insignificant impact on the market situation. But what decision will be made remains an open question,” he said.

The increase of excise duties on gasoline and fuel oil in 2016 had a negative impact on oil companies having limited their stimuli and benefits from modernization of oil refineries, Golomolzin said.

On the whole, the situation with fuel prices in Russia is currently favorable, he said. Prices for gasoline and diesel fuel will not exceed inflation in 2016, he said.

Golomolzin also said that a final decision to raise the gas transportation tariff for independent gas producers should be made after January 1, 2017. The antitrust body believes this should be done at the same time with growth of wholesale gas prices for industrial consumers, he said.

The antimonopoly service also plans to deregulate oil pipeline monopoly Transneft’s tariffs for transportation of oil products by 2018, as preliminary results of the market analysis showed that the company does not have a dominant position on the relevant market with a share of up to 15%, Golomolzin said.

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