Fuel, excise cut until 30 April

The Ministry of Economy has gone back to work on the 24.4 cents per litre rebate on excise duties on petrol and diesel. The new decree is expected in the council of ministers on Friday, and is intended to extend the cut for another 23 days, thus reaching 30 April.

From the outset, it was not difficult to foresee that the timetable of the measure would be flexible, extending beyond the 20 days decided with the first measure, which expired on 7 April. Also for this reason, enthusiasm did not dominate at the Ministry of the Economy for an intervention that, the experience of 2022 teaches us, is then complicated to shelve.

The numbers written on petrol station billboards did the rest. Last week's average, reported in the usual monitoring published yesterday by the Ministry of the Environment, saw petrol stand at 1.733 euro per litre, and diesel at 2.032 euro. In comparison with the survey of 2 March, thus relating to the last week before the US and Israeli attack on Iran, this is 6 cents per litre more for green and an additional 31 cents for diesel.

Alongside the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy also publishes a price observatory, which, being updated daily, makes it possible to compare yesterday's price lists with those of 19 March, the last day before the state discount effectively debuted. Compared to that day, petrol on average cost 13 cents less per litre yesterday, while in diesel the difference was less than 6 cents. Even if the government, with a linear cut to the ministries, has put its hand to its wallet precisely for 24.4 cents per litre: the effect of most of the 417.4 million put in for this purpose, therefore, has already been absorbed by the price increases.

Precisely this continuous price race complicates the idea of abandoning the discount. Without which, from 8 April, diesel would fly above 2.3 euro per litre, exceeding by 15-20 cents the all-time high reached in mid-March 2022: when the Draghi government started the excise cuts machine that, by extension after extension, arrived until December with a total cost of over 7 billion euro. For now, 5-600 million will end up on the table, with a hedging mechanism that Via XX Settembre is defining in these hours; in a range of options that also try to contemplate the different levels reached by petrol and diesel.