The Association des consommateurs de l?île Maurice (ACIM) protests strongly against government?s exploitation of price increases of petroleum and other products to gather tremendous revenge/riches/wealth at that expense of that same population. Through price increases, that is inflation, the population gets poorer and governement gets richer?What a paradox! The last budget proved the case beyond any doubt.

At every exercise of the Automatic Pricing Mechanism (APM) the population is well brain-washed to believe that the increase of petroleum price on the world market is the only reason for the need to increase the price of petroleum products on the local market. Well that is not the whole story. Whilst price increases of petroleum products are a grim reality of world market prices, the governement?s tax system for increasing its coffers through heavy taxes on petroleum products are the other downside of this grimmer reality.

At present, Government has excised 33% !! out of money obtained from the sale of petroleum paid by consumers to increase its revenue. This is amongst one of the highest petroleum tax rates of the world. That is out of every litre of light petroleum product sold at Rs 49.50, Rs 16.40 goes to government through taxes as explained below. And so is Rs 8.74 on every litre of diesel sold.

The increase in the price of petroleum increases Government?s riches and decreases people?s revenue?

The table below shows the taxation revenue for government:

It is clear that government benefits unduly and unfairly from petroleum price increases. It cannot go on stripping the population to nudity. If some can withhold this taxation with a fattened pay packet, others can?t. And nowadays not all motor vehicle users are rich.

ACIM therefore urgently requests that government reviews its policy to reduce taxes to the tune of Rs 5/lt. Other countries have gone along this line. There would be no hole in the government?s revenue if it adopted such a policy. And it would do lots of good to the population.

It should not be forgotten that it was this government that had increased the maximum allowable increase for APM exercises from 15% to 20%. And today we are made to bear the brunt of these stupendous increases by being burdened with more VAT and customs duty and environmental tax.

<B>Jayen CHELLUM</B>