Solidarity petitions Parliament over excessive fuel prices
1 March 2022
Solidarity today announced that it has drafted a parliamentary petition and is running a huge campaign to pressure the government to deregulate the petrol price and to lower fuel prices.
According to Solidarity, the government has a stranglehold on fuel prices which must be broken. In its petition Solidarity demands that the determination of fuel prices be left entirely to the market so that healthy competition can prevail for the benefit of consumers.
“While the rest of the world embraces the free market, the South African government is clinging to Soviet thinking that is hurting the economy. Determining fuel prices is one such example that is hurting the economy,” Theuns du Buisson, economics researcher at the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI) explains. “It is absurd to treat every filling station in every region in the same way while their immediate market environment, as well as the process of getting the fuel to that point differs. Ultimately, this is to the detriment of the consumer.”
Solidarity contends that most other countries leave the determination of fuel prices entirely to the market and where prices are indeed regulated, it is to keep them low.