At the request of the government, major distributors will play the game of selling fuel at cost price at least until the end of the year.
It was, after the bitter failure of the proposal to sell fuel at a loss, the government’s new hobby horse. Following the call from the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, on Sunday September 24 during the television news on TF1 and France 2, the major distributors unanimously agreed to sell their fuel at cost price. Most brands have already been doing this for several months with major operations on certain weekends. This will always be the case for several of them (Casino, Intermarché, Auchan, etc.), sometimes more repeatedly, others, like Leclerc and Carrefour, have already announced that they will all do so. days and until the end of the year, starting September 29.
If this is a small victory for the government, which is struggling to activate all the levers likely to reduce inflation, what will this concretely change for the consumer, the first to be affected by the rise in prices for more than two years? Unfortunately, not much. To fully understand, it is interesting to know what you pay when you fill the tank of your vehicle:
If the government would soon like to obtain from refiners a reduction in their production costs, it is the last line, that concerning distributors, which interests us in the context of the sale of fuel at cost price. Contacted by our colleagues at Capital, Olivier Gantois, spokesperson for oil companies in France, said this week that “the net margin of distributors, that is to say their profit, is of the order of 1 cent per liter. So when we talk about cost price we are logically talking about a price drop of 1 cent per liter, or even a maximum of 2 cents for the big service stations, and nothing at all for the smaller ones.” For those who imagined that selling at cost price would save several euros with each fill-up, it’s bound to be a cold shower.
While the price of a liter of Unleaded 95-E10 and that of diesel are equivalent this week, at 1.94 euros on average in France, selling at cost would therefore bring it down to around 1.92, 1.93 euros in service stations. who will play the game. A tiny difference in cost, bordering on the ridiculous, since the saving on a 50 liter tank will be around 1 euro for the consumer. Which prompts us to ask: all that for that?
