Despite the fear that it will cost 200 lek per liter, the fuel is sold below cost, even if it breaks the engine
Author: Denis Tahiri, Geri Emiri
"He (the man there) has wasted his hair from bad oil! That's what you have to do," he says Altin Shehu, who has been running the Berat - Tirana line for 24 years, and gets the sixty liters of oil he needs for the day at 166 Lek per liter. "This one of mine (a Setra) doesn't feel the quality of the oil, because it's old."
He (the man there) is a strong 69-year-old which he is taking to the parking lot, together with the driver and passengers, one bus with smooth and shiny gray bodywork. Thomas Ziu is part of a passenger transport company called "Mangalem sh.pk", which connects Berat with Tirana — thirty bus owners, shareholders in one company.
That moment in that place, at the South Bus Terminal in the capital, among the shareholders there are those who point the finger at Thomas, because he followed the government's order to remove the vans and keep only buses manufactured in 2000 and above.
"I regret buying it!" he says, as the bus takes his mind, the passengers all get off, and he after them. Government regulation was forgotten, he says, municipalities added transport licenses, and 20-seater vans are called buses and they go on and on, making everyone less work, and "they are fighting today with fists." And so, it was left to Thoma Ziut a 2003 Italian-designed French elegance called the Irisbus.
"I had to change the catalyst," he vents. Catalyst is a sheet of paper with gas filters, under the car's engine, which has the power to pass or remain in the class of what fuel circulates in this country. What bile keeps the oil dissolved, leaves it to the catalyst and blocks it.
But bus drivers say that age camouflages the car's oil tricks. The old ones digest the bad, making puff from other problems that have brought them the long years of use, while the new ones need good fuel.
And everyone expects the price to reach 200 ALL per liter very soon.
Vehicle defects leave the quality of oil in the class!
And this happens despite the fact that in this country a liter is sold very close to the cost, so close that it makes you wonder how this business works. No matter how much drivers complain about how high the price of oil has gone, that price should be even higher with the costs of a gas station. If you drop the pencil and calculate the price it comes to Albania with - which, at 68-lek, has been stable this period - and add the excise tax, turnover tax, retail sales margin, direct tax on the trader, the tax of the sign on the pole and that of the cash register in the office, among others, and to summarize all this with a VAT, the liter should be close to 190 lekši. And in fact, the average is 178.
This, without counting the profit of the gas station.
"The government uses energy to add revenue to the budget," says Zef Preçi, who heads the Albanian Center for Economic Research, a non-governmental organization. "It does not balance between specific fuel taxes and income taxes in the budget."
it's one o'clock in the afternoon in hot September. At the bus stop, dust rises from the buses entering and exiting. Setras from the 90s. Mercedes with cream white and blue stripes that must have torn up the streets of Greece before they got here. There is also a BredaMenarinibus, which has not been produced since 1994.
"The '95 and above are rare," says Ziu. "They are mainly from '89 and below. The problem with the oil quality is that these young people are blocked. That from 2000 onwards they are equipped with sensors."
"He quickly feels the oil in the engine," says Shehu.
It does not See any special case that has suffered from oil in this country. If you have ever taken a car for service, the problems brought by bad oil and the mechanic's queue ("soot!!! fuel oil!!!") will fill you with a codicil and a seal.
But in many areas of the country — mainly in the Fier-Lezhë axis — last spring, you could find oil for 151 lek a liter. We found diesel at 170 Lek and less per liter in four places on the Tirana - Durrës highway in September.
"There was none specific complaint for assessment of the situation for operators who operate at prices below the market value or related to the application of such predatory prices by entities operating in the market," comments the Competition Authority. Yawn.
The first in the region for fuel prices
Because of this tax burden, excluding Greece, which is in the European Union and because of the sins that led to the crisis has significantly reduced fiscal evasion, Albania has the highest fuel prices in the region. Greece has something like 190-200 Lek for a liter of oil. In Kosovo you can find it for 150 lek, in Macedonia 152 and in Montenegro 166. All three of these countries have made possible the figure of the small merchant from Albania who makes a trip there, and then sells oil with bottles of coke in Koplik a Kukës, or like that car which, on the first Monday of this October, was approached the van of the line Tirana — Peshkopi in Maqellare, made it stop, put the funnel on it and emptied the oil canisters that he had brought from Macedonia straight into the tank. They take them there for 100 lek and sell them for 140, the drivers say.
And this happens even though together with Romania, Albania is the only country in the region that produces oil. them The country's 480 motor vehicles — 437 vehicles and 7000 buses among them, according to the Institute of Statistics — were shaken.
Once again: A liter of diesel enters Albania at a price of 68 lek per liter, while other costs are added to this price by the time it ends up with me and you. 37 ALL is the excise tax, and another 27 ALL is the turnover tax and 3 ALL is the carbon tax. The merchant also pays direct taxes — local taxes and profit tax — which amount to 9 lek —, while the operational costs of the retail sale: transportation, fuel station maintenance, water, lights, and workers' salaries, Pano Soko, a connoisseur of the oil sector, calculates it at 17 ALL. The VAT on these items is 26,8 ALL and the round total is 187,8 ALL per liter (See the illustration in the chart below).
Economic television Scan, which draws up a 'fuel exchange', has not released less than 160 before going to the gas stations. Even a unit of economists in the United States that compiles global trade data puts the price of oil here higher than we buy it. On their website, Global Petrol Prices, the price, derived from official data, fluctuates between 1,65-1,68 US dollars, 179-182 ALL.
"The highest in the region ... among the 25 countries with the highest price in the world," says Gjergj Buxhuku of Konfindustria in an email statement on Sunday. And the fuels then, he adds, are "mostly outside the standards," making a bad situation worse.
As a result, tricks to extract profit at a price below cost can be many. There are doubts that the pumps are calibrated to give you, say, 0,95 liters of diesel when they swear, without fooling around with the pump indicator, that they gave you a fixed litre. A specialist in the sector says under his breath that the oil that is brought here is often declared with a higher burning power than it is, which is due to having been bought from imports much cheaper and declared to be bought more expensively. It is also said that the crude oil extracted in the areas of Patos and Fier is intended to be mixed with the fuel station's supply.
Some samples taken for analysis last year by the Albanian Center for Quality Journalism confirmed exactly those quality problems.
The bus is a bus and it is for the people. The car is for home and it is a showcase, and it is another account. For his 2004 Mercedes, Altin Shehu says that he gives diesel for 184 Lek per liter.
Well, Thoma Ziu used to buy diesel for 176 lek per liter and it went to "3000 euros together with the catalyst." Now he gets an average of 181 ALL. "They say we have good quality," he says. "What if I'm not a laboratory to measure the oil as it is."
Editor: Altin Raxhimi
