The National Association of Distributors of Petroleum Products (ANADIPP) notes that "orders from oil companies are reduced by 50% and service stations do not receive the quantities necessary to satisfy consumers" wonders what the Ministry of Trade and of Industry, Economy and Finance, the Office of Management of Development Assistance Programs the Primature faced with this situation.

For his part Randolph Rameau, the President of the Association of Petroleum Professionals (APPE) is much more worried and speaks lucidly of possible bankruptcies of oil companies and gas stations in Haiti.

On a radio station in the capital, he explained that the cost of petroleum products is increasing, that dollars on the local market are scarce and that companies order according to the dollars obtained, having reached the limit of their margin of credit they are under pressure from their creditors who claim the payment of their debt...

Faced with such a situation, Rameau expects, if this situation continues, that some companies will not be able to continue working at a loss and will cease to operate and many gas stations will bankrupt.

Recalling that when the State 15 to 20 days later, pays in Gourdes to the companies the subsidy on the price of fuel, so as not to bear the real cost to consumers, these oil companies must convert these Gourdes into dollars in order to be able to buy fuel and, when the needs amount to several tens of millions of dollars, it is impossible to find such an amount quickly on the formal market.

With an already unfavorable exchange rate of around 115 gourdes for one dollar, companies are forced to buy dollars on the informal market at more than 140 gourdes and assume losses to keep the market alive in Haiti; what the smaller companies can no longer assume and for the bigger ones it is not a situation that they can sustain in the long term...

PI/ HaitiLibre