Imbert slams taxi drivers for talking fare increase

MY POINT IS: Finance Minister Colm Imbert speaks with THA Chief Secretary Kelvin Charles after Monday’s budget 
presentation in the House 
of Representatives.    PHOTO BY ROGER JACOB
MY POINT IS: Finance Minister Colm Imbert speaks with THA Chief Secretary Kelvin Charles after Monday’s budget presentation in the House of Representatives. PHOTO BY ROGER JACOB

IT makes “no rational sense” for taxi drivers to increase fares by $1 just because the price of super gasoline has gone up by $1, Finance Minister Colm Imbert said yesterday.

“The cost of a taxi is the taxi itself—the purchase of the taxi, repairs, servicing, and then the fuel and labour. So there are a number of different elements that arrive at the cost of the fare. So when they say, alright gas went up by a dollar so we’ll send up the fare by a dollar, they’re really being very punitive, because the cost to them per passenger per trip is not a dollar. It might be ten or 15 cents for all you know when you add in all the other costs. The marginal increase is far less than the dollar increase in super gas.” Imbert was speaking at a media briefing at his office at the Eric Williams Financial Complex.

He announced in his budget presentation on Monday that the price of super gasoline would move from $3.97 per litre to $4.97 per litre, whereas diesel fuel would remain the same, as the government tries to gradually introduce the complete removal of the fuel subsidy. He defended the government’s decision saying there was no other choice because oil prices had increased beyond anybody’s expectation. The fuel subsidy kicks in when the cost of gasoline exceeds the set price mandated by the State, so when oil prices increase, it costs the government more to offset the price to drivers.

The subsidy is now over $1.6 billion, he said, up $100 million from the price he announced in his presentation. “The government has to make a decision – do you spend that entire $1.6 billion subsidising fuel or do you distribute that to people at the lowest end of the spectrum in society. And that’s the choice we made. We could have eliminated it all together. If we had done that, the price of super would have been $5.60 and the price of diesel $5.10 (based on current oil prices) but we didn’t do that.”

Instead, the government went with a compromise approach, leaving diesel unchanged.

“All maxi taxis as far as I know, with few exceptions, are diesel engines. So you’re really talking about the taxi cars and you have to look at the country and see how many people are transported in cars as opposed to maxi taxis and I dare say it will be less than half. And then you look at the fact that the vast majority of trucks and vans use diesel.”

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