Fuel tax hikes set down for July have gone on hold for a year, but increases totalling 3.5 cents a litre are set to go ahead from next year.
Transport Minister Steven Joyce said fuel tax increases of 1.5 cents per litre due to kick in on July 1 would be deferred.
Because of the "ongoing economic impact" of the global recession and the Christchurch earthquakes, it made sense to hold off on the increase for another year, Joyce said.
However, fuel tax increases "in the order of" 2 cents per litre in 2012 and a further 1.5 cents per litre in 2013 would probably be needed.
The fuel tax has already gone up with 3 cents a litre hikes in October 2009 and 2010. The Road User Charge, which is levied on diesel vehicles, went up by 7 per cent on average in the October 2010 hike.
The tax increases were proposed as a replacement to a new regional fuel tax, which the National-led Government scrapped.
The tax is supposed to fund the Government's $11b roading plans. Joyce said deferral of the planned 1.5 cent hike would not "significantly affect" the roading plan.
1.5% equates to a rise of around 3.3 cents/litre based on current fuel prices. It's not much, but we should be grateful for small mercies, as the cost of petrol has been a significant driver of increased costs across the board in the last few months.
Unfortunately, there seems to be little other good news on the horizon with regard to fuel prices; at least not while the Middle East and North Africa remains a political powder-keg. We can but hope that there might be some downward movement, but we won't hold our breath!
6 comments:
Bugger off. This is nothing- a sop -if I may be so bold to say
I am just waiting for Goofy to do his usual and oppose this tax cut for the rich.
It's coming CB; today Goff has already criticised Key for not ruling out working with Don Brash when Goff himself hasn't riled out working with Winston Peters, whom Key has.
The Nats now need to ask Goff if he would rule out working with Brash, and if he says "yes", they can smash him because he blasted key for refusing to consider working with Peters! What goes around comes around!!
That's right Steven Joyce, defer the petrol tax increase and instead add another few hundred million dollars to the monthy Government borrowings instead.
C'mon people. Its time we faced the facts. New Zealand is broke, and simply deferring the pain by slapping everything onto a credit card (issued by foreign bankers and sovereign wealth funds) is not the answer. We're all going to pay for it in the end and Steven Joyce and his Cabinet colleagues are being thoroughly dishonest and reckless.
No wonder lean machines of the political past like Don Brash are washing their socks off and stepping up to (remove) the plate. The big, fat, double-chinned pragmatists in the National Party Cabinet are dining out daily on the hard work of future generations of taxpayers.
@ Bovine; you've obviously not seen Parekura or Shane lately then ...
Parekura and Shane helped start this mess we're in and they got equally fat in the process (fat egos as much as anything else). The point is, National has done nothing substantial to stop the bleeding, and in fact has increased Government spending to a level higher than under Helen Clark! The National Government should be ashamed of itself. But no, Steven Joyce smiles, pats us all on the head and tell us its all cool, we'll defer any petrol tax increase (and anything else that might hurt a little bit now) and instead inflict that pain on the kids of tomorrow who will buckle under hundreds of billions of dollars of debt used to fund our Rugby World Cups and our broken finance companies. Slowly does it, she'll be right.
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