Have you noticed how our petrol, fuel, gases, transport provider hardly seem to drop prices even though we have eased off from the highs of USD$147/barrel to today's USD$100/barrel? That's about 30% drop in Brent Crude oil prices.
SIA just announced cutting fuel surcharge for short range flights, while coincidentally our Airports decides to raise departure taxes.
From Jan 1, departure taxes will go up $7 from $21 now - $15 airport tax and $6 security charge - travellers leaving from Changi Airport's main terminals will pay $28. And at Budget Terminal, the tax will go up from $13 to $15. Flying out of Seletar will cost $18, up from $16 now.
Somehow it all seems so familiar like government's usual pre-election freebies with post-election tax increases. "Give and take"
Stolen from PetrolWatch website
Anyhow, the main observation here is that our pump prices which peaked at S$2.36 in July for Grade 98 (excluding all credit card discounts, etc) and right now since early Aug, we have been stuck at S$2.07. That's only a 12% reduction?!! Is there a conspiracy or oligopolists are at play? These collusive actions are not checked by our government?
We are observing record revenues for oil companies, and people have to be suffering from such explicit collusion of price fixing. From higher fuel costs, fuel surcharges, food costs from transportation costs increases, I wonder if governments are in arms with these companies as they clearly have no qualms in bringing down the prices to reflect actual crude prices and bring down inflation.
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