AS FUEL prices reach unprecedented levels with more to come, some consumers yesterday said they didn’t see any other option than to pay up while others seemed to be cutting back.
At a petrol station on Byron Avenue in Nicosia, 50-year-old Ioannis Frageskides said: “I pay €20 a day on fuel but I have two children to drive everywhere: school, private lessons… I don’t exactly have a choice.”
Chairman of the petrol station owners’ association Stefanos Stefanou said on Thursday that current prices were the highest he’d ever seen in Cyprus, and warned that when the new VAT hike comes into effect next week, they would rise further. This will have a knock-on effect on electricity prices, which will make its way down the food chain. Inflation in Cyprus has been rising and at 4.2 per cent (as of December 2011, the latest available figure) is well above the 2.7 per cent EU average for the equivalent period.
Prices for essential goods and services have risen by almost 12 per cent for housing, water and electricity between January this year and January 2011. Food prices went up by 4.7 per cent and education by 3.05 per cent for the same time period, according to statistical services.
“If things were better I wouldn’t care paying a few extra euros for petrol. But wages are low and there are cuts everywhere. Anyway, what are we supposed to do? We have to go places,” 23-year-old Marilena said. She recently entered the job market as a retailer and said that with a low wage she had to watch her money.
Those coming and going to the Byron Avenue petrol station yesterday invariably discussed the economy.
Vassilis Dorotheou who runs the station said he has fewer customers running an account as of late. Loizos Ioannou, a 29-year-old salesman who travels a lot, said some station owners were no longer willing run an account. “You pay on the spot,” he said.
Dorotheou said: “Some clients have closed their taps themselves. We closed some too because people weren’t paying. But we haven’t had anyone ask for a running account in a while.”
The Commerce Ministry issued an announcement yesterday saying that the fuel price fluctuations were the same as those observed over time in other EU member states. Therefore there was no need to impose a price ceiling, it said.
Although fuel prices here are lower than the EU average, they are linked to electricity prices which in Cyprus are the highest in the bloc.
“It is of course a fact that Cyprus currently depends almost exclusively from importing oil to cover its energy needs and is so vulnerable to oil price fluctuations in the international markets,” the commerce ministry said.
Petrol companies said that crude oil prices rose because of higher demand in Asia and an ongoing dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme, with the EU stopping crude imports from Iran and Iran stopping sales to British and French companies.
Customers Eleni and Vassilis said yesterday they had bought a new car “because the old one was fuel hungry”.
“But we just filled the new car up today for the first time and I was taken aback,” Eleni said.
