Officials scrambled to excuse a fumble, attributed to the handover of the Presidency, as a result of which consumers are finding themselves having to pay increased prices for fuel as of Wednesday morning.
Head of the Parliamentary Finance Committee, Christiana Erotokritou announced on CyBC radio that an extraordinary meeting has been called with the ministry of finance to be followed by one in the House plenum to rescue the situation.
The apparent oversight concerns the reduction of consumer tax relief measure in place since March 7, 2022, which, in September, the House had fast-tracked to be extended to end of February, and on February 22 the outgoing cabinet had approved for a further extension until April 30.
However, on Tuesday it became known that the bill in question had not been officially tabled in a timely manner and had yet to be approved in the plenary, in an apparently ‘unavoidable’ omission attributed by Erotokritou to government handover procedures.
As a result, for an unknown duration of time, the resumption of consumption tax on fuels automatically falls back into place, increasing their price for consumers, who can expect to pay 7 cents more per litre for petrol, 8.3 cents more for diesel, and 6.4 cents more per litre for heating oil.
Erotokritou stated the emergency meeting will be convened at 3 pm on Thursday afternoon to rectify the matter as soon as possible.
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