If not a total, but a spectacular price reduction is coming to Hungarian gas stations – it was revealed in the information provided by Holtankoljak on Monday morning.
According to the fuel price monitoring blog, the wholesale price of diesel will drop significantly from Wednesday this week,
with a gross HUF 8.
All of this is expected to be reflected at the retail level, i.e. in the pricing of the charging stations. So this is good news for the affected vehicle owners, except that they will no longer touch the price of gasoline, that will not change. Therefore, the average prices from April 24, 2024 will be as follows:
- 95 gasoline – HUF 650/liter,
- diesel – HUF 639/liter.
Currently, the same is HUF 650 and HUF 647, respectively. So this will definitely remain until midnight on Tuesday, after which the new fuel price will come into effect. It is important to emphasize that these are average prices, from which the actual retail pricing can typically deviate downwards. On the other hand, next to the highways, fuel is roughly HUF 50 more expensive per liter. In any case, so far this year, that is, from January until now, at the wholesale level
the petrol price per liter increased by HUF 111, and the diesel price by HUF 65,
although HUF 41 of this can be traced back to the mandatory January excise tax increase. Excluding this, 70 and 25 forints extra can be observed for gasoline and diesel, respectively. After the roughly HUF 70-100 price increase per liter, an average 50-liter fuel tank costs HUF 4,000-5,000 more now than last December.
Will the government introduce another fuel price cap?
Minister of Economic Development Márton Nagy announced on Friday that the government will examine on Wednesday whether it should intervene due to the fact that domestic fuel prices are HUF 20-30 higher than the EU average. As Világgazdaság also reported, the Central Statistical Office published its regional comparison of fuel prices on Friday morning. The government previously made it dependent on whether it interfered with the functioning of the fuel market.
In the past period, the price of gasoline and diesel fuel has risen to such an extent that it has already reached the stimulus threshold of the cabinet. Márton Nagy did not rule out the possibility of applying the new official price, but drew attention to the fact that the government can use countless other methods of intervention, even at the expense of wholesale and retail margins.
The exact amount of the latter is carefully concealed by the actors. On the other hand, it is known that in Hungary the excise duty on gasoline is currently 152.5 forints per liter, and 142.9 forints on diesel. This remains below the typical EU level. However, the VAT rate is 27 percent, which is already higher. Added to this are the energy efficiency contribution and the retail tax, which applies differently to gas stations.
In addition to taxes, the producer price accounts for a good third of the fuel price. To the best of our knowledge, there is no mention that the government would put the amendment of the fuel tax structure on the agenda, however, Finance Minister Mihály Varga spoke at the April 11 government briefing that
“The tax period is not responsible for the fact that fuel in Hungary is more expensive than fuel in the region.
If we look at the net prices without taxes, the price of Hungarian fuel is completely in the middle. So I think that taxes should not be dealt with in this regard, but the production cost should be reduced to such an extent that the prices can go down.”
This part can be heard from 1:22:10 in the video below.
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