New Zealand considers monitoring petrol price

Tougher monitoring of petrol prices at the pump would only lead to a marginal price drop, possibly in the vicinity of a few cents a liter, New Zealands Commerce Minister Lianne Dalziel says. It wanted a probe into oil company profit margins and a comparison with similar markets, such as Australia. Dalziel said she had referred an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry into petrol prices to local officials. But she said a tougher Australian monitoring system she had looked at had only dropped the price of petrol at the margins” and she had been advised any gains here would be similarly small. According to AA PetrolWatch, diesel prices have more than doubled in the last 12 months, compared to a 25% increase in petrol prices. The AA also recently called for the GST component on petrol excise to be removed, a move that would reduce prices by 5.6 cents per liter. (May 5, 2008)