By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

AFTER meeting with gas retailers on Monday to discuss their concerns amid rising costs, Prime Minister Phillip “Brave” Davis said he believes the discussions with the group were “fruitful” and added he is hopeful that his administration will be able to reach within the next two weeks an amicable solution for the benefit of all.

The Bahamas Petroleum Retailers Association (BPRA) has in recent months escalated calls for the government to grant them a margin increase, arguing that they can no longer afford to operate on the current margin regime due to increasing costs.

 Just last week, retailers threatened to take action to get the government’s attention to their cries.

 However, the Davis administration has refused to grant them an increase, saying it will only lead to higher fuel costs at the pumps for Bahamian consumers.

 Yesterday, Mr Davis acknowledged the concerns of the association and said his administration was sympathetic to their struggles but also understood that they couldn’t act without taking into consideration the economic hardship facing Bahamians.

 However, he admitted that the government was reconsidering retailers’ proposals but declined to go into further details.

 “A lot of the challenges that they face, I’m sympathetic to and I understand their need to survive. I’ve asked them to give us another two weeks to assess the situation to see how we can help them,” said Mr Davis before going to a Cabinet meeting yesterday.

 “The challenge we have is how we prevent further burden on the travelling public, and we need to see how we can delicately balance bringing relief to them and at the same time not overly burdening the consumers and that’s what we’re talking about and I must say that the retailers are willing and have been talking with us.”

 Mr Davis spoke to reporters after meeting with representatives of BPRA on Monday to discuss their concerns and challenges in the industry.

 The Prime Minister described the talks as “cordial” and “fruitful”, adding “we think that we’ll be able to arrive at a solution that serves the common good of all.”

 When contacted by The Tribune yesterday to get his thoughts on how meetings went, Vasco Bastian, the association’s vice president, also agreed that it went well and said he was looking forward to having all issues resolved with the government

 “I don’t want to get into too many details as to all of the aspects of the meeting,” he said, “but we talked about several different things, but I can tell The Bahamas and everybody that I felt very, very happy and I’m still on cloud ten after having a very productive meeting with prime minister and Minister Halkitis and his technical team.”

 Meanwhile, the Office of the Prime Minister said in a statement released to the media Monday night that the government had agreed to explore other avenues to bring some relief to the retailers.

 When asked about these other options, Minister of Economic Affairs Michael Halkitis told reporters on the sidelines of an event yesterday: “Generally, we resolve to look at the entire model.”

 He added: “Certain Caribbean countries, they have a system of central purchasing. We want to take a look at that and see if that is suitable in our environment and we just want to look at the entire chain, from wholesale straight down to the consumer and just examine.”

 “So, there’s nothing we want to propose right now but there are just some other options that we’re looking at.”

 Mr Halkitis maintained that there was no easy solution but said the government was confident that it would be able to bring some relief to industry operators.

 “Their issues range from rents to franchise fees to bank charges to being charged to deposit cash and you know they’re a cash intensive business, credit card fees, any number of things increasing and so, including the private arrangements they make with their wholesalers, and again we don’t think that the simple solution is to increase the margin because when you pull one thread, it has impacts all straight through,” he added.

 The last time petroleum dealers enjoyed a margin increase was in 2011 when the Ingraham administration granted a 10-cent increase per gallon of gasoline to take it from 44 cents to 54 cents.

 A 15-cent increase per gallon of diesel was also allowed.

 The government itself currently collects over $1.60 for every gallon of gasoline sold in The Bahamas.