Mexican President Says Won't Increase Gasoline Prices

Mexico, Apr 9 (Prensa Latina) The price of fuels in Mexico will not increase beyond the inflation index, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador reiterated this Tuesday in his morning press conference at the National Palace.

Supported by the Treasury Secretary, Arturo Herrera, who carried the weight of the explanation, the president ratified that his government's commitment to prevent public prices from rising beyond the line of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) will remain unchanged, even if in relative terms they increase somewhat.

Based on graphs and statistics, the Treasury Secretary showed that what currently happens is that entrepreneurs have increased profit margins and that affects the consumer and should not be.

He said current prices are above one dollar a liter but may be lower because the state has done nothing but redistribute the 4.5 percent inflation in energy so that public prices do not skyrocket as is happening with the decision of entrepreneurs to increase their profits.

In this regard Lopez Obrador warned of the injustice being committed by the owners of the gas stations despite the conclusion that the government is fulfilling its commitment not to increase the price of fuels and electricity and announced some of the measures they can take to prevent it.

I call on concessionaires and distributors to act responsibly, not to be abused because we are following up on this issue. We are making efforts so that prices do not increase, and throughout this year there are not going to be any, there are no gas stations as there were before, in nothing, neither gas nor electricity, but that all help and support.

I repeat the call to concessionaires to review their profit margins, not to think we are not observing the behavior of the management of their prices to the consumer, so we make a fraternal exhortation, a friendly call. There are companies that manage up to 500 gas stations, and we call on them to help us.

We also ask consumers to help because we are going to spread the word about which gas station sells the cheapest and there is already an application on cell phones so they have the list at hand in every city and on Mondays here we will dedicate a minute to inform and put on screen which stations sold the most expensive and cheapest.

He warned that it would be a first stage to achieve fair prices without abuses, and then we would stay there, but if this mechanism is not understood to work, then we would think about creating a group of sales stations in the country, enough for those stations to sell at a fair price.