“Currently, Spain is the country that most guarantees the fuel supply of Portuguese transporters,” Antram President Gustavo Paulo Duarte told Lusa with some 12,000 of the association’s 15,000 members opting to refuel in Spain.
He added: “Only 10% do so in Portugal, followed by France and Germany with 5% apiece,” based upon the survey taken in the wake of the state budget hiking fuel duty by €0.06 a litre on diesel or petrol.
The association has held a series of talks with the government to try and find a way around this measure that Paulo Duarte said left Portuguese truckers with higher operating costs, given that fuel represents 35% of the total expenditure incurred by transport companies.
The government has already justified the fuel hike as necessary to offset the fall in state revenues accruing from the decline of the international oil price with the Antram president not impressed by this position.
“What happens is that this drop reflects in all countries and if in Portugal there is a higher fiscal burden, Portuguese companies in the sector will necessarily have higher production costs than their European competitors” explained Paulo Duarte.
The government has already made one concession, with the cost of fuels gaining a 20% deduction within the IRC company tax code that Antram has in the meanwhile rejected as “this does not enable the company to meet the amount it incurs due to the rise in fuel duty.”