Kazakh Experts Forecast Rise in Petrol Prices in Summer

Excerpt from report by privately-owned Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency

Almaty, 24 May: Despite the ban to export petrol and diesel oil from Kazakhstan from 1 June till 1 September, this year prices for fuel and lubricants will rise, experts think.

“Kazakhstan has to purchase from abroad 25 per cent of consumed volume of the most popular and high-octane petrol, AI-93. It is mainly imported from Russia and, as is known, prices there are higher than ours. That is why there will not be a decrease in prices,” the director-general of the Gelios company, which owns the biggest network of filling stations in the country, Konstantin Sviridov, said in an interview with the Vremya newspaper, which was published today.

[Passage omitted: the expert thinks that fuel price increase depends on increase of world prices for petrol]

Madzhit Koyatdinov [doctor of economics] links the petrol price rise with an increase in the number of cars in the republic and a lack of local facilities for producing fuel and lubricants.

“The country’s car fleet increased by 20 per cent in 2007 only. During the period from 2003 till 2007 the number of cars doubled in Kazakhstan. Demand for fuel and lubricants increases and our oil refining plants cannot satisfy them,” the economist said.

[Passage omitted: Koyatdinov criticizes the work of oil refineries]

Originally published by Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, Almaty, in Russian 1008 24 May 08.

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