ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, Sept 1, CMC – Prime Minister Gaston Browne says he is disappointed at the decision of gas station owners here to shut down their facilities on Tuesday in support of their demands for an increase in their profit margins.
“I just got a call that gas station dealers are demanding an increase in their profit margin and threatening closure, at a time when the Government has eliminated its margin to keep prices down. Bad timing!” Browne said in a statement posted on his Facebook page.
“Our government eliminated the consumption tax to keep prices down; how can anyone justify an increase in profit margin at this time, to further burden their customers, during an escalation in oil prices,” Browne added.
“All gas stations are profitable. If you want to make more money; you increase prices at an opportune time, instead of burdening your customers with an increase, during a time of escalated oil prices,” he wrote, adding “that’s not good business”.
The dealers’ demand is not new. Twenty-one operators wrote to the government in March seeking an increase in the eight per cent margin they receive on fuel sales. They say the rate has remained largely unchanged since the early 1990s despite rising wages, electricity, insurance and maintenance costs.
Browne said he has been assured that several gas stations will open on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Browne had earlier acknowledged that the ongoing war between the United States and Iran is having an impact on energy prices on the global market as Antigua and Barbuda prepares to increase fuel prices this week.
Browne, speaking on his weekly radio programme, said also that his administration cannot continue to subsidize the price of the commodity as it had been doing for several months in the past.
“We have not only been subsidizing the cost of fuel at the pump, but we have also been paying West Indies Oil Company rather than collecting tax revenues from the company,” Browne told radio listeners.
“I want the public to understand that we normally collect between three and four million dollars (One EC dollar=US$0.37 cents) monthly from WIOC on an average. So instead of collecting that three to four million dollars per month for the past six months, roughly EC$24 million, we now owe WIOC EC$15 million,” he said.
Browne said that officials in the Ministry of Finance are advising that expected increases in fuel prices could be in the vicinity of EC$$3.50 cents, but that this would constitute too large an increase at the pump and that the government has agreed on a price of two dollars across the board.
“That was too large an increase to be implemented in one fell swoop, so we settled on a smaller increase,” Browne said, and as a result, the prices at the pump will move from the current EC$14.50 for gasoline to an estimated EC$16.50, diesel at EC$16.25 per gallon.
CMC/ak/ir/2026