Rome, 7 March 2022 – CNG for cars, in the background the war in Ukraine. Now the prices are even higher “4 euros per kilo. Some distributor, it is out of the question, will have to close. But this has been happening since September, there have already been temporary closures. We have since proposed to the government a package of measures which never took off, starting fromVAT at 5%“.
Gas price, Federmetano: “Unseen values, that’s why. Impossible to make predictions”
To speak is Dante Natalipresident of Federmetanothe association representing the 30% of the 1,500 resellers Of methane for cars in Italy.
Crazy prices and the sector at the end. Already in December Natali had reported the international tensions that were unloaded on the sector. The coup de grace was the conflict. Here are the rumors that come to him from the associates: “It is impossible to continue working in these conditions”, also because “in this way we have no customers”. There are now dozens of outlets with prices above 3 euros per kilo.
Natali puts emergencies back in line. “da mesi – remember – we fear enormous difficulties. And for months we have been presenting a list of requests. “In summary: 5% reduced VAT also applied to automotive use with the possibility of transferring this benefit to the end user, possible reduction of system costs and request to the CNG Cylinder Fund Management Committee to put on the agenda a postponement / reduction of the charges of the foreseen contribution, in order to allow further reductions for users, as in the package presented in October.
And now? “Now let’s consider reduce opening hours“, sighs disconsolately an operator who prefers to remain anonymous. He points out:” This is already happening for construction, steel, ceramics. We will have to adapt too “.
Bus transport
Then the repercussions of the diesel prices on the sector ofautotrasporto. The increases will determine “a higher cost for the companies of the entire sector of passenger transport by bus by approximately 300 million euros on an annual basis, an absolutely unsustainable situation “, says the president of Anav, Giuseppe Vinella, the Confindustria association representing the bus transport sectors. Diesel, he stresses, constitutes “by far the second cost item for companies after that of personnel and it is therefore necessary that the government and parliament also adopt specific measures for the containment of the cost of professional diesel for companies in the sector as part of the next energy provision “.
The transport of passengers by bus (local public transport, commercial bus lines, bus rental with driver), highlights the Anav, “is a sector with a very low environmental footprint and absolutely central to the decarbonisation process of private motorized mobility, which as a whole engages 6,000 companieswith 120,000 employees e 70,000 buses, which develop collective transport services for about 2 billion km per year, with double the number of passengers transported compared to railways “. For these reasons” it is necessary that the desired measures to contain the prices of energy products take into account their incidence in single industrial sectors most exposed. Therefore, targeted interventions on methane and electricity are well – concludes Vinella – families and businesses absolutely need them, but it is equally fundamental to pay attention to the dizzying increase in the cost of diesel which risks bringing passenger transport companies by bus to their knees, and the same provision of the service, already severely tested in the last two years by the containment measures of the pandemic “.