Sol drops fuel price shortly after saying it still had taxed stock

Sol Guyana has finally dropped its fuel price hours after its General Manager, Earl Carribon told the News Room that the company still had taxed stock in store and would be unable to say when consumers would begin to benefit from a reduction.

At 11:00hrs when the interview was done, Sol’s prices stood at $249 per litre for Fuel Save, $249 per for V-Power, while the diesel price stood at $249 per litre.

By 14:00hrs, Sol’s Fuel Save moved to $229 per litre, while the V-Power moved to $237 per litre. The diesel price however, remains at $249 per litre.

Carribon had explained to the News Room earlier that Sol’s prices will not be affected by the government’s removal of the excise tax on fuel from 10 percent to zero percent – a move taken to cushion the hike in global oil prices.

He had said that the prices would remain until the company’s inventory that attracted the 10 percent excise tax was depleted.

“When reduction in the excise tax would have been announced and it would have been communicated that it was effective immediately, we already would have imported some product which will have attracted excise tax of 10 percent,” Carribon said prior to the reduction on Monday.

“There is a process involved before the price is reduced; you need to deplete that inventory first, you need to sell inventory first that will have attracted that 10 percent before we then move into the new product layer which will be attracting zero percent.”

The Sol Group of companies operates in 22 countries across the Eastern Caribbean, including Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Bermuda, Bahamas, Cayman, Belize, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Martinique and Guadeloupe.

They have nine service stations operating across Guyana.