Brazil’s Truckers Want Diesel Price Freeze for Freight Charge Calculation

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Brazilian Association of Motor Vehicle Drivers (ABRAVA) is calling on the federal government to freeze the price of diesel in order to calculate the minimum floor payment for highway transportation.

In practical terms, ABRAVA’s petition refers to the temporary suspension of the diesel trigger – an instrument ruled by the chart that provides for a review when the fluctuation in the price of biofuel is more than ten percent, either negative or positive.

“The suspension of the diesel trigger will automatically freeze prices maintaining the figures practiced before the Covid-19 pandemic in relation to diesel,” said the president of the ABRAVA, Wallace Landim.

The petition was forwarded on Thursday, April 30th, to the Ministry of Infrastructure and addressed to its Minister, Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas. In the petition, the truckers request that the measure should be restricted to the period of the novel coronavirus crisis.

Landim says the measure is due to the recent sharp drop in diesel prices. The fuel followed the significant drop in oil prices and like other oils, it was affected by lower demand due to the reduced flow of people in the midst of social isolation measures.

As a justification for the trigger freeze during the pandemic, the ABRAVA says that the current table is “outdated” and that its reduction along with diesel would result in even greater losses to the cohort of truckers “that is keeping the country supplied”. In the document, the Association requests that the oil price threshold before the pandemic be maintained for calculating the table.

The truckers argue that their members are suffering losses due to the decrease in demand by industry. “There is a need to prevent the sharp drop in the minimum freight rate to be paid to self-employed truckers, since despite the downward fluctuation in fuel prices we have seen a considerable increase in the price of supplies that make up the price of freight transport,” says the ABRAVA document.

The current regulation of freight tariff establishes that the minimum floor should be revised when there is fluctuation equal or greater than ten percent in diesel prices. Therefore, a potential new readjustment was already being considered by the National Agency of Terrestrial Transport (ANTT), which yesterday launched a public consultation on the issue. The table was last updated in January this year.

Source: Estadão Conteúdo

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