Tehran, Iran, April 18
By Milad Fashtami - Trend:
Iranians have reportedly started storing gasoline in their homes.
Bijan Haj Mohammadreza, head of Iran's Gas Station Owners Union, said that the upcoming price hike has forced people to store gasoline while it is still being provided at the previous price.
As part of the second phase of subsidy reform plan, Iranian government is supposed to raise gasoline prices.
"People are storing gasoline in non-standard containers," he said.
He further said that the gas pump's monitors cannot display five digit prices, so the price of gasoline should not exceed 9,999 rials.
Iranian government has decided to cut semi-subsidized gasoline quota for cars until further notice.
The government was supposed to announce new prices for semi-subsidized and free market gasoline on April 20, as part of implementing the second phase of subsidy reform plan, Iran's Mehr News Agency reported.
Semi-subsidised gasoline was previously sold at 4,000 rials (33 cents), while the free market gasoline price was 7,000 rials.
Now, the government says that it will not increase the price of free market gasoline until further notice; instead it will cut the semi-subsidized gasoline quota.
Iranians with cars used to receive a monthly allowance of 60 liters with the semi-subsidies price until last month and had to pay 7,000 rials per liter for larger volumes.
The government, however, announced that it has not cut the public transportation vehicles' semi-subsidized gasoline quota, so any increase in transportation fares will be unacceptable.
Some 174 million liters of gasoline were consumed in Iran in the last two days of the Iranian calendar month of Farvardin (April 19-20).
Some 80.7 million liters were consumed on April 19 and some 94 million liters on April 20, Iran's IRNA News Agency reported.
It is while the average gasoline consumption of Iran in the week to April 12 was around 66 million liters.