The National Union of Petroleum and Gas criticized the Competition Council's recent report on monitoring the Moroccan fuel market.
The union considered the report overflowing with data and topics that fall outside the jurisdiction of the Competition Council, but rather fall under the purview of various agencies, including customs, the Exchange Office, and the Ministry of Energy Transition. It warned that collecting commercial data from stakeholders risks leaking and sharing data among them, which is prohibited by law and considered a form of price negotiation.
The union's statement, a copy of which was obtained by Al-Youm 24, stated that the main missing element in these reports is the answer to the single question: Are the convicted companies still committing their violations? And if the violations persist, what does the council expect to see before it can impose stricter penalties in accordance with the law?
The same source questioned the Council's failure to compare prices before and after liberalization, its failure to explain the more than doubling of operators' profit margins, its "avoidance" of addressing the negative repercussions of rising fuel prices on production costs and the daily lives of Moroccans, and its reversal of its previous position on the necessity of Morocco owning the keys to oil refining.
The statement emphasized that the rise in fuel prices is due to the decision to eliminate subsidies and liberalize prices, not to the international market, considering that primary responsibility for this lies with the Prime Minister, who has the authority to cancel price liberalization and re-regulate them.