Last year, drivers paid around two BAM for a liter of diesel, while today they have to pay more than three BAM. Due to the enormous filling of the state treasury, the government is not doing anything and does not aim to limit the growth of fuel prices, so attempts to the abolishment of excise duties on fuel and differentiate VAT have failed.
Tax burden
Only from April last year to April this year, the state put about 60 million BAM into the state treasury due to higher fuel prices.
And while budgets are filling up, projects are stagnating, citizens are fearing new fuel prices every day.
Faruk Hadzic, a macroeconomic analyst, explained how much the state takes from a liter of fuel and said that, when it comes to the tax burden, there is a fixed and variable part.
”The fixed part refers to excise, road tolls, and motorway tolls. Excise duty varies from 30 to 40 pfennigs, depending on the type of fuel. So 0.30 pfennigs are charged per liter of diesel, 0.35 pfennigs per liter of petrol 95 and 0.40 pfennigs per liter of petrol 98,” Hadzic states.
VAT collection
To all this, another 0.40 pfennigs are added, of which 0.20 goes to tolls for highways and roads.
”And finally, the amount of VAT is calculated on all that. At this price of fuel, the state takes between 1.10 and 1.20 BAM per liter of fuel. This amount varies mostly due to the amount of VAT, which means – the higher the price of fuel on the world market, the more VAT is collected by the state and it is not in its interest to lower the price of fuel. About 1.1 billion BAM a year is taken on tolls, without VAT. So, in five years, that is five billion BAM,” Hadzic adds.
However, the introduction of new levies is not aimed at road construction, and new sections are opened only virtually. The government continued to raise loans, and the money taken from the pockets of citizens is in various accounts.
Fuel prices
The Federal Ministry of Trade has provided fuel price data for the past seven days. What has been noted is that there are no new reductions.
The price of premium unleaded gasoline ranges from 2.46 BAM to 3.11 BAM per liter, while a liter of diesel costs from 3.06 BAM to 3.36 BAM.
E.Dz.
