If you tried to get diesel after 7:00 last night, chances are, you found gas stations that had just run out. That's because there was a rush on gas stations because diesel prices increased by $2.50 per gallon at midnight. But yesterday the Prime Minister said it would've been well over $3 if the government hadn't absorbed some of the cost of this latest shipment.
But is that enough? Will they consider lowering their tax take on the fuel prices? Here's how he put it.
Reporter
"Are you thinking of freezing government's take in terms of the increase on fuel prices like you did before?"
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Well we are looking at that and yes we will have to see how far it will go. As it is just now we are foregoing I think at least $1.20 in tax and that will represent I think it's over 60 million dollars that we're foregoing and when we forego 60 million dollars or what Honorable Lee Mark Chang was talking about writing it off because over 200 million, okay we could write it off but where would we get the 200 million to be able to pay the teachers, the BDF, to pay for NHI, to pay Karl Heusner, there's so many things we have to do, the money has to come from somewhere. So it's easy to say cut it but tell me, as I said to him, tell me where we're going to get the money to be able to plug that hole. I guess we may have to take a hard look at the budget and maybe there's some projects that we can hold back until things stabilize but right now we need to really look and see what is going to happen so we don't want to just jump the gun before we do that so we're doing our best as we can to be able to ease the pressure on people."
"As I said, the price would have gone up in excess of $3 but because we are cutting the tax by $1.25 that it is going to go down to less than $3 increase."
