Let’s do a little summary to understand the current situation. On March 28, the Government announced that the discount of 20 cents per liter of fuel promised to carriers as a star measure to end the strike was extended to all drivers.
The measure would come into force on April 1 and would mean that all gas stations would have to apply a discount of 20 cuenticos per liter of fuel (for all fuels) once the driver went through the box. Of this amount, 15 cents would be assumed by the Government and five by the oil company; but, in principle, it would be the service stations that advanced the money.
The latter caused numerous complaints, especially by the smaller gas stations that denounced their inability to assume such a cost. The Executive’s solution was to promise an advance that the service stations could request from April 1 and would begin to charge shortly after.
An advance that does not arrive
The first weekend of discounts has been closed with computer chaos and hundreds of gas stations that have been forced to close temporarily as they cannot assume the advance required by the Government.
The Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, announced that the form so that the service stations could request the advance payment would be activated on Friday, at the same time as the discounts; and that payments would begin hours later. The first has been fulfilled (not without problems) and the second, at the moment, has not.
An advance of 40,000 euros per month
Representatives of the Spanish Confederation of Service Station Employers (CEEES) and the Spanish Association of Retail Carburants and Fuels (Aevecar) estimate that on average each service station will have to advance about 40,000 euros per month. In addition, they warn that the advance payment from the Tax Agency will compensate a part of the amount but not 100%.
“With average sales per service station of approximately two million liters of fuel per year, the discount of 20 cents means more than a thousand euros per day for each gas station,” explains Nacho Rabadán, spokesman for CEEES in statements collected by the agency EFE.
CEEES also denounces that there are gas station chains that, instead of applying the 20-cent reduction directly to the price, are giving that amount “in a bonus for the next refuelling”, which, in its opinion, is an irregular practice to build customer loyalty. client.
The advance, when it arrives, will not be enough
The decree law approved by the Executive establishes that the stations can request an advance of 90% of the monthly average of their 2021 sales.
The service stations consider that this is “a wrong calculation method, since last year’s statistics were affected by mobility restrictions due to covid-19.” It is also a problem for those that have started operating later and do not have a reference value on which to request the advance.
“We have estimated that 90% of the monthly average for 2021 is equivalent to about 50% of this year’s sales,” criticized the CEO of Ceees, which brings together about 4,000 of the 11,650 service stations in the country. “That means that even when the advance is collected, the employer will still have to advance more than 500 euros a day,” he lamented.
