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Updated Sunday, March 2, 2008 0:00 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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CPC to continue freeze on oil prices

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- State-run CPC Corp. Taiwan has decided to continue freezing a hike on its domestic oil prices for March, in a move that is in line with government policy, CPC officials said yesterday.

Based on a floating oil-pricing formula, the CPC should hike its prices on unleaded gasoline and diesel by NT$2.4 and NT$2.7 per liter, respectively, after taking its oil costs into consideration.

But since domestic oil prices have been raised by 26.13 percent since September 2007, the CPC has decided not to further raise its oil sales prices, based on a government policy set late last year that does not allow further oil price hikes unless the aggregate hike rate is under 12 percent.

Accordingly, local oil consumers won’t suffer any further price hikes for a while, especially at a critical juncture — the presidential election will be held in late March.

In related news, the Cabinet-level Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) yesterday released statistics indicating that in January, domestic sales of gasoline and diesel oil by filling stations islandwide came to 1.16 million kiloliters, down 7 percent from a year earlier.

DGBAS officials attributed the oil consumption decline to the fact that lingering high oil prices have forced quite a few people to take mass transit instead of driving on their own.

DGBAS tallies showed that aggregate domestic sales of gasoline and diesel oil products amounted to 13.845 million kiloliters in 2007, down 2.2 percent from 2006.

Meanwhile, statistics compiled by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed that as of the end of January this year, there were a total of 2,606 oil filling stations around the island, a slight increase of 27 from a year earlier. But the average oil sales volume recorded by each station has been on the decline.

According to tallies released by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), there were a total of 36 million passengers using the Taipei mass rapid transit system in January, representing an annual increase of 7.4 percent. During the same month, there were two million passengers using the high-speed rail system, shooting up 68.6 percent from a year earlier. The total number of vehicles using the national freeways in January amounted to 38 million, showing a slight annual decline of 1.3 percent, according to the same MOTC statistics.

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