KYIV, May 19 – The return of the excise tax on petroleum products, which was canceled by the Verkhovna Rada along with the reduction of VAT from 20% to 7% in March this year, will increase tax revenues to the budget and allocate additional funds to finance the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Director of the A-95 consulting group Serhiy Kuyun has said.

You are solving the problem of reducing demand by the method of high prices. But now the high price will be due to a high markup, which gives nothing in terms of filling the market... So let this price be high due to taxes, state benefits. It will be clearer to people: I bought fuel at UAH 55-70 per liter, however, UAH 10-15-20 of them will go to the Armed Forces of Ukraine," he wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.

Earlier, on May 17, the crisis center under the Cabinet of Ministers, headed by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, decided to abandon state regulation of fuel prices, setting the maximum price for gasoline at UAH 52 per liter and diesel fuel at UAH 58 per liter in conditions when a number of filling stations offer fuel from filling columns at higher prices.

Kuyun said that in the context of a shortage of fuel in the domestic market, which can be satisfied in a couple of months, a number of factors, both objective and speculative, may provoke an increase in fuel consumption and an increase in the trade markup. In particular, the excitement among the population, which fills with fuel not only the tanks of a car, but also any other containers.

One of the networks shared statistics: if it is possible to fill up 30 liters, only half of these customers manage to squeeze in such a volume. That is, the tanks are not empty," Kuyun said.

The next factor in increasing demand, in his opinion, is the import of 76,500 "preferential" cars to Ukraine, which potentially increases demand by 8% with an estimated need of 450,000 tons of fuel per month. (om/ez)