RTPI — Tudo E Economia
20261011 050000 UTC
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[00:00:41] Welcome to Everything is Economy, new
[00:00:43] gasoline doesn't even reach week, new increase in fuel
[00:00:46] prices. Have we already reached maximum values,
[00:00:50] or will gasoline and gas oil continue to
[00:00:53] rise? How can this escalation be stopped? Are the measures that the
[00:00:57] government announced sufficient to deal with the problem? Is
[00:01:00] the state gaining more from rising prices? Will
[00:01:04] this crisis further accelerate the energy transition
[00:01:08] in the automotive market in Portugal? Questions that we will analyze
[00:01:11] today with Nuno Ribeiro da Silva, former president of Endez,
[00:01:15] a specialist in energy issues, and with
[00:01:18] economists Alexandra Abreu and Pedro Brinca. Welcome,
[00:01:23] the thank you for your presence. Naturally, Nuno Ribeiro da Silva, let's start with
[00:01:25] you. Are we facing maximum values for
[00:01:29] gas oil and gasoline, or are new increases expected in your
[00:01:32] opinion? No one can say that we are at the maximum
[00:01:36] values, unfortunately. What we see is
[00:01:39] an enormous volatility,
[00:01:43] due to the statements and events that occur,
[00:01:46] and the events can be very varied. It's not just the
[00:01:49] issue of oil and
[00:01:56] gas for essentially in refined natural gas delivery that worries me a lot, and in the market,
[00:01:59] the damage that is caused
[00:02:04] that the to the gas pipeline, to the pipeline, to the tanker, to
[00:02:07] the LNG carrier, to the refinery.
[00:02:11] Therefore, due to
[00:02:13] the news that keeps emerging every moment
[00:02:17] about the disruptions caused by all
[00:02:20] this logistics and the
[00:02:23] fossil fuels, namely oil
[00:02:26] and gas, there is a market reaction that is very
[00:02:30] fast, very sensitive. Let's not forget that the oil
[00:02:33] market is the largest market in the world.
[00:02:37] What is traded daily
[00:02:41] is equivalent to
[00:02:44] desire to eat with the physical oil. We are talking about
[00:02:47] about 5% of the
[00:02:51] transactions that are completed. In other words,
[00:02:53] it is a volatile market, an extremely
[00:02:57] nervous market. It's ready to go up,
[00:03:00] isn't it? And to go down too, and to go down, it's not
[00:03:04] the perception that you have, is it? With prices, I don't know if that's
[00:03:08] reports anticipate that the the perception. It's more about the pump, the so-called pump
[00:03:11] price, in terms of raw materials.
[00:03:15] There is a lot of fluctuation, but at the pumps, there's this
[00:03:18] perception, at least the perception that it goes up very quickly,
[00:03:22] but then when it's time to come down, it takes a bit longer. Is this
[00:03:25] perception or is it actually happening? Well, there are several
[00:03:28] reasons for this.
[00:03:32] Historically, whenever there are these types of situations,
[00:03:35] governments, the American government itself recently and currently with the
[00:03:39] American president, sort of
[00:03:42] shrug off the blame to insinuate
[00:03:46] that there's speculation, that there's
[00:03:49] cartelization, that there are secret meetings
[00:03:52] for price fixing and mischief,
[00:03:55] let's say, among the players in the oil
[00:03:59] chain. What happens is that
[00:04:02] there are a whole series of
[00:04:05] economy to parameters in the price paid at the pump that
[00:04:09] are not just the cost of the raw
[00:04:13] material. And for example, this type of
[00:04:17] mechanism that has been used
[00:04:21] when there is a
[00:04:24] rise in price
[00:04:27] to compensate for the VAT, there is more that governments charge.
[00:04:30] They reduce
[00:04:34] the specific tax, the so-called ISP, the special tax on
[00:04:37] petroleum products. When
[00:04:41] there is such a decrease, also
[00:04:44] what was discounted in the ISP is taken
[00:04:48] back. Therefore, there is no direct reflection between the
[00:04:51] behavior of, let's say, the fundamentals,
[00:04:55] which give reason to the
[00:04:57] price, and
[00:05:00] the immediate reflection in
[00:05:03] our pocket, right? I know our
[00:05:08] I hope, I don't think it's an optimistic scenario, but I hope that in a pocket is the most sensitive organ of our body, but
[00:05:11] what happens is that there are indeed
[00:05:14] reasons. In this moment, the
[00:05:18] price of oil since the war began was
[00:05:21] approximately $75, it is at
[00:05:24] $100. It is not something
[00:05:27] extraordinary. There were many times when the price of a barrel was $100
[00:05:31] and people lived peacefully and without
[00:05:35] great nervousness.
[00:05:37] The problem is that here there is an
[00:05:41] accumulation of
[00:05:44] really a price of around 28%
[00:05:47] of the barrel, but an accumulation of more than
[00:05:50] 100% in the price of final products,
[00:05:54] of the so-called refined products, diesel,
[00:05:57] gasoline, jet fuel, aviation
[00:06:00] fuel, etc. All the myriad of products that
[00:06:03] come from that fantastic product which is crude oil
[00:06:07] and to give you an idea, the
[00:06:11] barrel of oil is at... $100 today, around
[00:06:14] that. The equivalent of a barrel of gas oil is at
[00:06:18] $200. Therefore, there is indeed
[00:06:22] a huge
[00:06:25] weight of the perception
[00:06:28] of reality that the market is very
[00:06:32] 1.4 million barrels per day of gas
[00:06:35] oil in the market, and therefore there is a
[00:06:39] lot of pressure on the
[00:06:42] refined products, which, in short, gives a nice
[00:06:45] premium to refineries.
[00:06:49] But that's life. Alexandra
[00:06:52] Abreu, in your
[00:06:55] opinion, have prices already reached their
[00:06:58] peak, or are we still very much in doubt, and the worst is
[00:07:02] yet to come? Good evening, Rui. Good evening, Engineer Ribeiro da
[00:07:06] Silva. Good evening, Pedro. Good evening, viewers.
[00:07:08] As the engineer said, it is
[00:07:12] very difficult to make predictions regarding this matter, isn't it? What we know is
[00:07:16] that the fundamental reasons for this
[00:07:19] fuel price shock, which then becomes a
[00:07:23] shock also in terms of the cost of living in a more general way, are
[00:07:26] fundamentally related to the contraction of supply. There is a real
[00:07:30] supply contraction, according to the estimates I read, that I found, of the order
[00:07:34] of something like 6% in terms of the total world oil
[00:07:38] production in 2026. There is
[00:07:40] an effective contraction.
[00:07:42] There is also a very specific constraint at the refining
[00:07:46] level, which, incidentally, explains the extraordinary
[00:07:49] refining margins that many, many oil companies are managing
[00:07:52] to obtain. This has to do with what is happening in the Gulf, in
[00:07:56] Hormuz, it also has to do with what is happening in Russia. This combination of
[00:07:59] constraints and limitations
[00:08:02] suggests that, moreover, it has been causing
[00:08:06] a very significant price increase, because it has its
[00:08:10] effective origin in the restriction of supply, and most of the
[00:08:14] specialists in the sector that I have seen at an international
[00:08:17] level, the estimates from specialized
[00:08:21] recovery will not occur before 2027. So probably in the
[00:08:25] coming months we will continue to face this, bearing in mind that this is
[00:08:28] still very dependent on the geopolitical dimension
[00:08:32] evolution, but can we go back to having prices like we had, when I say price
[00:08:36] I'm talking about pump prices, final prices, can we go back
[00:08:40] to having prices like the ones we had. It's not that they were that
[00:08:43] spectacular, but anyway, they were better than now, the prices
[00:08:46] we had before this war started with Iran. Well, I think that's really the question that needs to be asked, because
[00:08:50] we, Portugal, cannot have
[00:08:54] any kind of impact on international oil
[00:08:57] prices, but it can influence how the bill
[00:09:01] is distributed within our country, between families,
[00:09:04] businesses, the state, it can somehow, through public
[00:09:08] policies, define
[00:09:11] whether it goes more one way or the other, and everything we have seen so far in general is that
[00:09:14] the bill is being paid almost exclusively by families or by small and
[00:09:18] medium-sized businesses in general. The state, despite some measures
[00:09:22] it has been taking, especially recently, they are announcing, we will
[00:09:26] analyze them exactly, exactly. But in fact, for now, it is not
[00:09:30] really taking a stance in terms of public policies that
[00:09:33] involves assuming a significant part of this
[00:09:37] impact. We also have in the oil chain some
[00:09:40] companies, namely oil companies, that have the refining part and are making
[00:09:44] extraordinary profits and in this sense it is fair that they should be called
[00:09:48] upon to contribute to financing some of the measures that would then allow
[00:09:52] or would have allowed, and in my opinion that is also where we should act
[00:09:56] more decisively, at the level of reducing the final prices
[00:10:00] themselves. In fact, just look at the Spanish example, for instance,
[00:10:02] where not only, to remember last week's conversation, not only
[00:10:06] at a level Portugal started
[00:10:10] with higher prices than fuels in Spain, but throughout this year, for
[00:10:13] example, diesel increased by 62 cents per
[00:10:17] liter, from January until now, in Portugal, in Spain it increased by 45 cents,
[00:10:20] so Spain acts much more decisively with many more public
[00:10:25] policies. We will analyze that issue of policies
[00:10:29] at the initial price, what is the growth rate compared between the two,
[00:10:32] as it's from a lower base, it will
[00:10:35] make the calculations. The Spanish government committed 5
[00:10:38] million euros
[00:10:40] for the unilateral reduction of VAT,
[00:10:44] and they are losing 5 million euros with
[00:10:48] that measure. We will analyze this issue of the decisions that the government has been
[00:10:51] taking, the governments, I would even say, Pedro, how do you see
[00:10:54] this issue of fuel prices? Will we be at the maximum
[00:10:57] possibility of returning to the prices we had before the
[00:11:01] war with Iran, if things calm down internationally? Well, since I was the third to answer the question, I had time to
[00:11:05] Google, right? So I went to look at the futures markets, the present
[00:11:09] value of WTI. What the futures markets suggest is a decrease in the price
[00:11:13] until January 2027, which was the horizon I saw there. So the markets
[00:11:16] are anticipating a decrease in the price of oil
[00:11:20] in the coming months. But
[00:11:24] even if we didn't look at the futures contracts, what do we have? We
[00:11:27] have a sharp escalation towards electrification,
[00:11:31] the energy transition. We have an increase
[00:11:34] in efficiency of batteries, we have an increase
[00:11:37] in autonomy. And this is just
[00:11:41] naturally referring to the issue of cars. So
[00:11:44] structurally, what seems to me is that in fact we
[00:11:48] have already come a long way to be less
[00:11:50] dependent on the prices of
[00:11:53] hydrocarbons. The more this path is
[00:11:56] followed, and this price increase, there it is,
[00:12:00] also has a positive side, which is to accelerate this. Whoever can do it and
[00:12:03] has the conditions to do it, perhaps with this price increase, will do it even
[00:12:07] faster. Structurally, it seems to me that we are heading towards a
[00:12:10] scenario in which the price of oil, if not to say, could return
[00:12:14] to old prices, even drop below the prices that were
[00:12:17] previously. China, for example, with an enormous consumer, is also undergoing a
[00:12:21] brutal energy transition movement.
[00:12:24] Obviously, there will be no shortage of consumers for hydrocarbons in the
[00:12:27] next 50 or 100 years, India and other countries that are still
[00:12:30] accelerating in the economic development part, but
[00:12:34] it seems to me that no, it seems to me alarmist to
[00:12:38] think that oil will now continue to rise without stopping, right? I mean, that doesn't
[00:12:41] exist. It doesn't seem to me to be the case. The impact on
[00:12:44] inflation arises, it obviously arises directly
[00:12:48] because petroleum derivatives are used for fuel
[00:12:51] in final consumption, and a large part is used
[00:12:55] in the production of everything else. Everything else requires energy, and in
[00:12:58] particular, some goods are particularly sensitive precisely to the cost
[00:13:02] of energy, namely, for example, foodstuffs, right? If in the
[00:13:05] medium term, looking at a period of months to
[00:13:08] a year, this inflation will translate a lot, will transmit a lot to
[00:13:12] foodstuffs. Then we have mechanisms within our
[00:13:16] economy of indexation to inflation, whether in pensions, whether in
[00:13:20] rents, whether in wage negotiations,
[00:13:23] etc., that ensure that even a temporary increase in
[00:13:26] inflation that affects a certain year will propagate in the following
[00:13:30] years. This obviously causes the European Central Bank
[00:13:33] to have a problem here, which is they have a commitment
[00:13:37] to reach 2% in the medium term, we are talking about two
[00:13:41] years. Raising interest rates to react to a direct effect of energy
[00:13:44] makes no sense. It's not by raising interest rates that more oil will come
[00:13:48] from the Middle East, but
[00:13:51] indirectly it raises a question that is, from the moment that the agents...
[00:13:55] families, companies begin to anticipate higher
[00:13:58] inflation for a longer period, both in terms
[00:14:02] of wage demands, wage negotiations, higher values, and in terms of
[00:14:05] entrepreneurs themselves believing that inflation will be higher for a longer
[00:14:09] period, they will also incorporate this into their
[00:14:13] pricing plans. All of this generates inflation by itself, and there
[00:14:16] are indeed signs that inflation expectations, what people
[00:14:19] think inflation will be, are already disconnected from the 2%
[00:14:23] target. In such a scenario, the European banks have no
[00:14:26] alternative but to intervene by raising interest rates, and
[00:14:30] at this moment the markets are pricing in an interest rate hike
[00:14:34] of 25 basis points by the end of the year, with a probability
[00:14:38] above 50%. It is very likely that this will happen if the
[00:14:41] markets are correct, and this is more or less the scenario that
[00:14:44] we are living in. For energy to continue
[00:14:48] to accelerate inflation or to push inflation
[00:14:51] up even further, we would have to have constant increases in the price
[00:14:55] of oil. I mean, there's no scenario I've
[00:14:59] seen where that's possible. Now, let's
[00:15:02] see, events of very low probability,
[00:15:06] suddenly the whole Middle East explodes and everything
[00:15:08] starts in a completely open war that destroys
[00:15:12] capacity, that makes international shipping
[00:15:16] much more dangerous and expensive due to insurance,
[00:15:19] etc. Of course,
[00:15:22] of course. Now it doesn't seem that
[00:15:26] we are close to that scenario, and I
[00:15:30] believe that in a year,
[00:15:33] year we won't be talking about this in the news.
[00:15:37] Nuno Ribeiro da Silva, there's a question that everyone asks a bit, which is that people
[00:15:41] bought diesel cars because diesel was cheaper than
[00:15:45] gasoline. You just mentioned that oil is at $100, refined
[00:15:48] diesel is at $200. Why
[00:15:51] has the increase in diesel prices been much greater than that of gasoline?
[00:15:55] Because on the one hand,
[00:15:59] there is much less consumption of gasoline than diesel, namely in
[00:16:03] Europe. And
[00:16:05] the consumption. To give you an idea, in
[00:16:08] Portugal, the annual consumption of diesel is around
[00:16:12] 6 billion liters. It's easier to talk about
[00:16:16] liters, it's easier to see. While
[00:16:21] a third of this, it's about 1.7
[00:16:24] million liters.
[00:16:27] Therefore, and not only does diesel have uses other than just
[00:16:31] for road fuel, diesel for agriculture,
[00:16:35] diesel still used in many industrial processes,
[00:16:39] diesel still used in many heating
[00:16:42] and air conditioning.
[00:16:44] Then in fact, there has been,
[00:16:48] for several years now, with the increase
[00:16:52] in efficiency of diesel
[00:16:55] combustion engines, and
[00:16:58] with the increase in the
[00:17:02] performance of diesel vehicles,
[00:17:05] there has been a shift
[00:17:08] in consumption preference from gasoline to
[00:17:12] diesel, but above all there is this aspect.
[00:17:16] Diesel not only in road
[00:17:19] consumption, which is around 4 billion, but
[00:17:22] then there are another
[00:17:25] 2 billion liters that are
[00:17:28] used
[00:17:31] economic activity, in
[00:17:34] businesses, in agriculture,
[00:17:38] etc.
[00:17:40] What do we have? We have
[00:17:44] indeed a shortage of refining
[00:17:47] capacity, namely
[00:17:49] in Europe. There was a
[00:17:53] reduction from 2019
[00:17:56] to the current to
[00:17:59] 2026 of about 25
[00:18:02] million barrels being produced
[00:18:06] by refineries in Europe to 19
[00:18:10] million. Russia took advantage
[00:18:14] of this process,
[00:18:16] meanwhile we know what is happening
[00:18:21] with the shutdown of refineries
[00:18:24] and due to the conflicts, due to the
[00:18:27] maintenance in Russia and the Middle
[00:18:30] East also took advantage of this process within a comprehensible
[00:18:34] strategy that has been followed by them.
[00:18:37] As holders of the raw material,
[00:18:40] they developed the industrial area to
[00:18:44] add value, to add value to the
[00:18:48] value chain. Therefore, they received many
[00:18:51] refineries and became
[00:18:54] very relevant exporters of
[00:18:58] finished products, let's say. What happens,
[00:19:01] to make matters worse, is that while to leave
[00:19:04] that other one, which is the Persian
[00:19:08] Gulf, there are
[00:19:11] pipelines that transport out of the
[00:19:15] Gulf by crossing
[00:19:18] the Arabian Peninsula to the Red Sea or even
[00:19:21] exits already to the south in the Arabian Sea
[00:19:25] to the south of the obligation to
[00:19:28] go around the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz,
[00:19:31] incidentally, while there
[00:19:35] is not the same
[00:19:38] alternative for the outflow of
[00:19:40] products such as refined products, gas,
[00:19:43] and therefore there is
[00:19:47] a bottleneck,
[00:19:50] let's say, of
[00:19:53] refined products that are processed
[00:19:57] in those countries in the Gulf,
[00:20:00] that in fact the alternative they have to leave is by
[00:20:03] ship, and with ships we know how things have been. You just said
[00:20:07] that you were also concerned, I don't know if that was the expression, about the issue of
[00:20:11] gas. Is an increase in gas prices expected in the coming
[00:20:14] increase in prices? The three largest gas
[00:20:18] producers on the planet are the United States, which is the largest producer, as it is the largest producer
[00:20:22] of oil, by far.
[00:20:25] And then Russia
[00:20:28] and Qatar. What happens is that, namely for
[00:20:32] Europe, we have restrictions
[00:20:35] on buying gas, namely from the Russians. We know since
[00:20:38] 2022 what this has been.
[00:20:42] The big gas producer,
[00:20:45] the big exporter
[00:20:48] from the Gulf is Qatar. Qatar has
[00:20:52] really this constraint of
[00:20:55] only exporting by
[00:20:58] ship through the liquefaction of gas and therefore the
[00:21:01] LNG carriers that bring the gas to Europe or
[00:21:05] Asia. At this moment,
[00:21:08] this is very restricted.
[00:21:11] The production base of gas
[00:21:15] in Ras Laffan also suffered
[00:21:18] damage in the areas of the gas liquefaction
[00:21:21] units. That's not really where the problem has been, because
[00:21:25] it was about three units out of about
[00:21:29] 17, but in fact the outflow
[00:21:33] capacity, moreover, the LNG carriers are
[00:21:36] much more sensitive vessels, much more expensive,
[00:21:39] with much higher insurance, much more vulnerable
[00:21:43] than oil tankers. And therefore, the
[00:21:46] shipowners, the insurance premiums, immensely
[00:21:50] affect
[00:21:52] the risk operation of these
[00:21:55] LNG carriers, and that's why I say
[00:21:59] that I'm concerned about this from the supply side. On the other
[00:22:02] hand, regarding demand, focusing
[00:22:05] again on Europe, what is happening is that we
[00:22:09] are delaying, postponing
[00:22:13] cyclical replenishment that always happens every
[00:22:16] year, of the reserves of...
[00:22:20] namely of gas to face the winter.
[00:22:23] In Portugal,
[00:22:26] we don't have that much culture, also because natural
[00:22:30] gas is relatively new in our country, and
[00:22:33] but all that central Europe, including
[00:22:37] Germany and the Netherlands,
[00:22:40] Belgium, England, etc.,
[00:22:43] use a lot of
[00:22:46] air conditioning, for heating in winter. What has been happening,
[00:22:50] and the markets know this, is
[00:22:54] replenishment that normally occurs
[00:22:57] from, let's say, typically from July,
[00:23:01] of the storage capacity of
[00:23:05] gas deposits, of gas caverns,
[00:23:09] and where gas
[00:23:12] is stored to be burned
[00:23:16] in the period of greatest consumption, which is winter, has
[00:23:20] been postponed again and again in the hope of operators that
[00:23:24] prices will come down, but what has been happening is that prices are going up.
[00:23:27] We are also at 77
[00:23:30] dollars, euros per megawatt, which is an
[00:23:34] easy indicator to remember. Now,
[00:23:37] when Russia reached
[00:23:39] 350, it reached 350, but
[00:23:43] in any case, we actually have repressed
[00:23:47] demand that will
[00:23:51] eventually come to the surface, not to mention Asia.
[00:23:54] We have two major
[00:23:58] players, two major exporters and suppliers to the world
[00:24:01] market, Qatar and Russia, constrained for the
[00:24:05] reasons that have been stated. In terms of what are the measures to deal with this problem
[00:24:09] in the case of rising fuel prices, but possibly also gas at a later
[00:24:12] stage, from your point of view does it make more sense to reinforce family
[00:24:16] income, as the government has said, or to immediately
[00:24:19] lower the burden on fuels to ease prices
[00:24:22] and wallets? What makes no sense is
[00:24:25] to distribute money from the balcony,
[00:24:29] that is, we are in a, we return here to a
[00:24:33] topic a while ago, we have 8 billion
[00:24:36] liters of diesel and
[00:24:40] gasoline consumed in Portugal, 8 billion
[00:24:44] liters, a subsidy of 10
[00:24:47] cents means 800 million.
[00:24:50] euros, it's a lot of money in our
[00:24:55] withdraw from tax revenues,
[00:24:59] with the consequent imbalance of
[00:25:03] public accounts,
[00:25:06] that is, to do, there is a balance that
[00:25:09] was made and which colleagues should
[00:25:12] know about the practical effects
[00:25:15] that
[00:25:18] there were, namely in the... Western
[00:25:21] supports eh that were given at the time of the
[00:25:25] Gulf War also eh in the
[00:25:28] decade of the
[00:25:32] at the end of the decade of 2010 eh
[00:25:35] the support
[00:25:38] that eh economies gave eh or that
[00:25:42] states gave to economies. Well, the
[00:25:46] balance that is made eh
[00:25:48] clearly points, I think I was reading an article eh, well, by the renowned economist Professor
[00:25:52] Ricardo Reis, who was about to
[00:25:55] enter, but didn't, it
[00:25:59] seems Trump didn't like it.
[00:26:04] and he says exactly in a recent article not to repeat the
[00:26:08] mistakes of the past and a
[00:26:10] series are indiscriminate aid, they are exactly
[00:26:14] indiscriminate aid and
[00:26:17] - the other day I was saying there what that means is the government should not be
[00:26:20] lowering the price of
[00:26:24] fuels for everyone, it cannot be lowering it because it's
[00:26:27] sustainable. Eh, as I said, 10 cents is
[00:26:31] perhaps little today. Because between
[00:26:34] 2.20 cm per liter,
[00:26:37] 2.10, we continue to be angry and we continue to have
[00:26:41] uncomfortable pressures
[00:26:43] at least, eh, 10 cents means
[00:26:47] giving up 800 million euros, that
[00:26:50] is, eh, which is clearly
[00:26:53] advised by the World Bank, by the European Central Bank,
[00:26:57] eh, by the International Monetary Fund, by the
[00:27:00] general. the
[00:27:02] ECB, exactly, everyone says the same thing,
[00:27:06] it's eh, there's a moment of crisis, we have
[00:27:10] two scenarios, either this is going to last a long time, then,
[00:27:13] as the other gentleman said, get used to it,
[00:27:16] because there is no eh recipe eh and
[00:27:20] palliative for us to take cortisone our whole lives,
[00:27:23] eh, if it is foreseen or there is an expectation,
[00:27:27] hope eh that
[00:27:30] eh, hope as... strategy, no, if there is an
[00:27:34] expectation that eh this will be
[00:27:37] temporary, whatever that means,
[00:27:40] then very well, so as not to completely
[00:27:44] derail eh,
[00:27:46] whether companies, whether families,
[00:27:50] eh, that there is a concern
[00:27:53] to pour some water on the fire, but
[00:27:57] in a very cautious way, very
[00:28:00] cautious, it's not... generalize the discounts
[00:28:04] I spend 150 liters of gasoline per month, that
[00:28:07] is, it's not - very
[00:28:10] reasonable that the state is giving up revenue from taxes for me to be a relatively large
[00:28:14] consumer of gasoline
[00:28:16] eh, now in terms
[00:28:20] of exposed sectors, industry
[00:28:23] eh that has to resort
[00:28:27] in the process, in the process
[00:28:31] to derivatives. oil, eh, in
[00:28:34] agriculture, in transport, eh,
[00:28:37] critical families, solution, what is
[00:28:41] pointed out, as is somehow done in
[00:28:44] electricity, eh, with the so-called social tariff,
[00:28:48] is to have support, to have
[00:28:50] voters, eh, who help
[00:28:54] families who are notoriously more
[00:28:57] deprived, more exposed to
[00:29:00] this peak. crisis or
[00:29:04] we shall see to have
[00:29:06] and let's say a
[00:29:10] support judicious, balanced eh
[00:29:14] so as not to not suffer such a great impact.
[00:29:17] Alexandra Abreu eh does it seem like a correct strategy or not
[00:29:21] really? I agree on some points and disagree on others, no? Eh
[00:29:25] it seems to me that the assumption is always that this is a temporary shock, it can last longer
[00:29:29] or shorter, but the assumption is a temporary shock that we know the underlying
[00:29:33] reasons for, which have to do with the conflict, destruction of productive capacity,
[00:29:37] disruption in the distribution chains associated with
[00:29:40] fuels. In that sense, assuming that the
[00:29:43] conflict is not eternal, it is perfectly solvable.
[00:29:46] Ha, there's another underlying issue, by the way, I can't help but refer to that too, which
[00:29:50] is the issue of rising prices as a virtuous signal for the
[00:29:54] energy and carbon transition. I doubt anyone at this table,
[00:29:57] with all due respect, with your
[00:30:01] concerns.
[00:30:09] and ecological credentials, but I doubt, I doubt, I doubt they have, I doubt they have more ecological concerns than me, they may not have less, but they won't have more,
[00:30:13] no, the price is what drives ecological concerns, but what I
[00:30:16] think, what I think about this is that an energy transition
[00:30:20] made on the backs of families' pockets and in
[00:30:23] particular those with less purchasing power is not a just transition and that's what no one here said, but that's
[00:30:27] what I'm saying, it's my opinion and that's why and that's why
[00:30:30] and that's why what I think is I am in favor of all investments in
[00:30:34] electrification, I am in favor of all investments in strengthening public
[00:30:38] transport, its quality, comfort, accessibility, schedules
[00:30:41] and everything else, to create incentives for people to use public transport as much as possible, for
[00:30:45] goods to be transported by railway instead of eh by
[00:30:49] road, a gross strategic mistake that this country made in recent decades, I am
[00:30:53] in favor of all that, but to think that the transition will be made,
[00:30:56] taking advantage of this brutal increase in the cost of living
[00:31:00] that is penalizing the idea is clear.
[00:31:04] Now, regarding the support, it should be directed, targeted, or two
[00:31:08] generalized notes, two notes, the first is that it doesn't seem
[00:31:11] reasonable to me that the food basket
[00:31:15] has increased 6% since the beginning of the year, 36% since
[00:31:18] 2022, that families have to bear more than 30 € to
[00:31:22] fill their tank every time they fill their fuel tank
[00:31:26] on top of the increased cost of food
[00:31:30] and now also on house payments in many cases, and that the state is not
[00:31:33] willing to give up some of the tax revenue and remains
[00:31:37] committed to the objective of budgetary balance in this
[00:31:41] context that already has characteristics of a macroeconomic crisis
[00:31:44] because effectively if inflation starts to skyrocket, we have inflation, we have
[00:31:48] a social and distributive problem, we have,
[00:31:51] we have some risk of eh of starting to slow down, of approaching stagnation, there is
[00:31:55] a risk of that happening, companies can start
[00:31:59] to be, especially SMEs can be very pressured, so it doesn't
[00:32:03] seem to make any sense for the government to continue
[00:32:06] committed to a goal of budgetary balance in the face of a
[00:32:09] situation that is a cost of living emergency, and that's
[00:32:13] why I'm in favor of doing it.
[00:32:17] the government has applied a discount, but the question was different, the question was whether the aid is generalized, should the
[00:32:21] aid be generalized or directed to needy
[00:32:23] families and to the companies most dependent on
[00:32:27] fuel? It's not that the question is the following: it's that protecting
[00:32:30] and avoiding an excessive excessively rapid increase, which in principle is
[00:32:34] temporary but excessively high, in the price of fuels is not just subsidizing
[00:32:38] motorists, it's ensuring that the poorest families who spend a larger part
[00:32:41] of their income on consumption, and in particular on consumption,
[00:32:45] consumption of food products, are not affected
[00:32:47] so significantly.
[00:32:53] As we know, as we also know as economists, that is,
[00:32:57] eh, a budgetary imbalance is not just a
[00:33:00] fetish, and in particular in a situation where we have
[00:33:03] inflationary pressure, that is, eh, that
[00:33:06] means having to finance deficits in the markets,
[00:33:10] eh, that will also
[00:33:13] have effects. that reflect a whole macroeconomic
[00:33:17] imbalance that we're going to have to
[00:33:20] pay
[00:33:26] the policies followed by the Socrates government that
[00:33:28] we've been
[00:33:31] the objective is not macroeconomic stimulus, the objective is to give the
[00:33:34] objective is to contain the inflationary process in a
[00:33:37] way, in a way, no, no, but that idea that only monetary
[00:33:41] policy can respond to inflation cannot respond directly by giving up some tax revenue.
[00:33:45] In a country where a good part of fuel prices is
[00:33:48] taxes, especially, especially especially looking at a macroeconomics
[00:33:52] textbook, a fiscal expansionary policy does not contribute to
[00:33:56] inflation, you have two effects at the same time, as you know, you have two effects at the same time, on the one hand you are
[00:34:00] directly affecting the cost structure at the same time, but it is indiscriminate. I would
[00:34:03] accept it if it was targeted, then I agree with you, but
[00:34:07] you are not defending that, you are defending
[00:34:10] an expansionary fiscal policy by pouring revenue into everything. I am
[00:34:14] defending.
[00:34:16] I am advocating something that is so possible, which is what is being done in
[00:34:18] Spain. and that is your definition of the correct
[00:34:22] policy, it is more correct, it is more correct than what is being done
[00:34:26] here because it protects, because it protects families more, especially the poorest ones,
[00:34:30] the most
[00:34:33] studies 5 million so far in
[00:34:37] tax revenue eh in an absolutely
[00:34:40] indiscriminate way,
[00:34:43] the measure to lower VAT.
[00:34:47] of the discount, both deserved the discount on the ISP or on VAT, in the case of VAT in
[00:34:50] Spain, richer families than poorer families,
[00:34:53] right, right, but in aggregate terms,
[00:34:57] in aggregate terms, low-income families end
[00:35:00] up receiving more and
[00:35:02] small and medium-sized businesses that also have greater
[00:35:06] difficulties facing this crisis due to cash flow difficulties and due to
[00:35:10] cost difficulties are also the ones that are most affected by the balance sheet that was
[00:35:13] made of the aids. In the previous crisis, at the time
[00:35:17] right after Russia, the balance sheet was made,
[00:35:20] 4/5 of the money allocated
[00:35:23] eh for those supports, 25%
[00:35:27] were completely
[00:35:29] eh ownerless, so to speak, they were not
[00:35:33] affected, directed,
[00:35:37] 4/5 of the money thrown from the balcony is not a
[00:35:40] study, there are several
[00:35:44] studies. countries where, when we look at the IMF, for every 100
[00:35:48] euros of fuel price decrease, 34 go to the richest 20%, nine to the
[00:35:51] poorest 20%. This is from the IMF, I could be talking about France, that
[00:35:55] is, we have so much evidence of what happened in
[00:35:58] 2022 to understand this measure, in
[00:36:01] theory it was already idiotic, but with all the empirical evidence
[00:36:05] we have, with all the literature that has been published, to insist
[00:36:08] on this, I have no words, I don't know, I
[00:36:11] am, I am speechless, I don't know what to say.
[00:36:15] This is a measure that puts much more money in the pockets of the rich than the
[00:36:18] poor, that is, we can be very, I understand part of the goodness of the
[00:36:22] measure, because it is somewhat targeted, as Alexandre said
[00:36:26] very well, families. The poorest have a greater
[00:36:30] weight of food and energy in their budget than richer families. Pedro
[00:36:33] bringa, but how can a family, a needy
[00:36:37] family, go to the gas station to put gasoline in the
[00:36:40] car, for example, and pay with the money the government gives them instead of
[00:36:43] arriving at the gas station and having much
[00:36:47] less help, because in terms of fiscal expenditure, the state has to pay for that
[00:36:51] diesel for disadvantaged families, but it also has to pay for the diesel, as a colleague
[00:36:55] of mine, António Nogueira Leite, said, for those who put
[00:36:58] gasoline in their Ferrari, as is obvious, as it should be obvious, I don't need all those
[00:37:01] empirical studies that were cited here and others that I have
[00:37:05] here that I can cite for France, for Spain, for a
[00:37:08] comprehensive IMF study, to understand that this measure makes no
[00:37:11] sense at all, it makes no sense at all. We have much more effective mechanisms to
[00:37:15] get money to those who need it, and we should help those who need it,
[00:37:19] not everyone indiscriminately, very well, even in Portugal and
[00:37:22] while we wait for that, the bill at the end of the month continues to rise, but wait, you
[00:37:26] asked me. What they asked me here as a social
[00:37:30] scientist is to tell me what is the most effective measure
[00:37:32] to minimize fiscal expenditure, is it the
[00:37:36] best measure in the world or is it if this is positive or not, this is
[00:37:39] negative.
[00:37:43] best measure in the world, but it's better than not doing it, no, because you
[00:37:46] spent, look at one thing, the state, the state will put much
[00:37:49] more money in the pockets of the rich.
[00:37:50] ricos
[00:37:54] not in relative terms and not taking into account the cost structure effect. Measures
[00:37:58] on how the government intends to proceed, it's not just the government, at the European level the question is being
[00:38:02] asked to tax
[00:38:05] eh the unexpected profits, the
[00:38:08] windfall profits, the excessive profits, if we can say so, eh of the
[00:38:12] oil companies. Does this make sense? Measures like limiting
[00:38:15] margins for gas stations or even setting
[00:38:18] maximum prices are measures that from your point of view can make
[00:38:22] sense as temporary measures to mitigate
[00:38:25] the impact of this. Prices. Wow, let's
[00:38:29] see. Eh, we are here, eh, with the
[00:38:32] hope, as, as I said earlier, the
[00:38:35] strategy, hope as strategy, no,
[00:38:39] that, eh, this will not last long. The
[00:38:42] invasion eh, of Ukraine we also
[00:38:45] thought it was something that would not take long.
[00:38:48] It's already been 4 years, the contribution to inflation has to dry up, unless
[00:38:52] it continues to rise to 1. for
[00:38:55] here, over. the question of Ukraine that is
[00:38:59] as it is, eh furthermore,
[00:39:02] eh this, this situation of the
[00:39:05] Gulf which in the energy
[00:39:08] plan joins hunger to the
[00:39:11] crisis also eh in part
[00:39:14] energetic eh in the context of the war in Ukraine with
[00:39:17] Russia eh all
[00:39:20] believe that this will end quickly,
[00:39:23] but there is no crystal ball that guarantees
[00:39:26] us that. eh, besides, eh, it depends
[00:39:30] on the damage that eh has been created in the energy
[00:39:33] infrastructure, it depends on whether Iran
[00:39:37] eh manages to impose
[00:39:40] eh a tax on
[00:39:42] the transit of ships
[00:39:45] that will become another cost factor, that is, for
[00:39:48] inflation to continue to rise, that means there must be more and more restrictions on oil because it is not
[00:39:52] a level jump for inflation to end.
[00:39:56] acabaro.
[00:40:02] richer received from the discount 64 to
[00:40:05] 115 € and the poorest 25% 29 to
[00:40:08] 48 and in Italy the richest decile received
[00:40:11] 6.5 times more from the cut than the
[00:40:14] poorest, in Portugal the Zero VAT gave the fifth richest 20% more
[00:40:18] resources than the poorest while the support for vulnerable families channeled 71%
[00:40:22] to the fifth poorest, this is
[00:40:24] Portugal.
[00:40:27] with social justice then disappears in direct taxes in progressivity when we discuss
[00:40:31] the progressivity of IRS, then there is no concern, the concern only
[00:40:35] exists, it only exists when it is at
[00:40:37] home, only the concern with
[00:40:40] this, only the concern with we are giving too much to the rich when
[00:40:44] we talk populism
[00:40:47] is a lie, I'm going to tell you why it's a lie because direct taxes are more
[00:40:51] progressive, no, because today I was live criticizing the IRS
[00:40:55] measure as an aid measure
[00:41:07] households in Portugal do not pay IRS and 25% of families
[00:41:10] account for 75% of revenues,
[00:41:13] it won't go, it won't go to the poorest, so it's a lie and I hope you retract
[00:41:17] now.
[00:41:19] Congratulations, I don't know if you also defend higher IRS rates in general for the
[00:41:22] rich like I do.
[00:41:26] I don't know if the topic today is not IRS, nor IRS progressivity,
[00:41:30] nor the maximum rates of IRS, the
[00:41:32] only thing I want to know your opinion on is
[00:41:35] if it makes sense to apply measures like I asked Nuno
[00:41:39] Ribeiro da Silva. how to limit the margins of eh
[00:41:42] oil companies, how to set maximum prices
[00:41:45] temporarily and even this
[00:41:47] tax,
[00:41:49] we had the experience that we should have already forgotten, eh
[00:41:53] of the government of Engineer António Guterres when
[00:41:57] in an eh impulse eh in the
[00:42:00] parliament he said that eh gasoline
[00:42:03] prices were not going around
[00:42:06] 2014, they were not going beyond the value that I don't even remember what it was...
[00:42:10] stipulated, that is something that
[00:42:13] even two years ago we were paying for, France did the
[00:42:17] same thing when there was the price peak crisis
[00:42:20] eh with the war with the
[00:42:24] Russians eh and in 8
[00:42:27] months accumulated 45 million euros in
[00:42:31] charges for the budget, therefore, in the first
[00:42:34] place, the question of defining and
[00:42:38] ceilings on... prices is a
[00:42:42] situation I would say childish
[00:42:45] eh, because it doesn't work, the prices
[00:42:48] eh that are formed in the market,
[00:42:51] whether of the raw material of oil, whether of
[00:42:54] refined products, whether of freight of all the logistics
[00:42:57] eh of the energy market
[00:42:59] eh, excuse the expression, it's
[00:43:03] indifferent to eh
[00:43:07] for Portugal, for... of
[00:43:10] China, for whoever is going to set
[00:43:12] ceilings, it's eh and
[00:43:16] recent experiences eh are
[00:43:19] evident
[00:43:21] eh of the damage that we have in
[00:43:23] Madeira.
[00:43:26] The other aspect that I referred to was about limits
[00:43:30] to margins and
[00:43:31] taxing.
[00:43:34] Eh, I frankly, I frankly don't like
[00:43:38] that idea. there is some quickness in the excessive
[00:43:41] profits, the question of excessive profits, what do companies
[00:43:45] pay corporate income tax for? If they have more profits,
[00:43:49] they will pay more taxes.
[00:43:52] Eh, who defines what is
[00:43:55] an excessive profit for an oil company, for a
[00:43:59] grocery store, for a kiosk in the Prince Royal Garden? No, and
[00:44:03] Galp's profits come from outside the country.
[00:44:06] That is, in general terms, in general terms,
[00:44:11] it is very, it is absolutely
[00:44:14] random to define what a
[00:44:18] reasonable profit is. Eh, the definition was profits
[00:44:21] 20% above the average of recent years, yes, but what
[00:44:25] happens is
[00:44:27] I'm not here to defend oil companies or
[00:44:31] companies A or B or C. Now what actually happens, for example, in the
[00:44:34] past decade is that oil
[00:44:37] companies were a bit struggling to
[00:44:41] pay for huge investments they
[00:44:45] had made to increase extraction and
[00:44:48] meanwhile the price of a barrel of oil was at $60, which did not
[00:44:51] cover the investments made, they went massively into debt, now
[00:44:55] they are running unduly, now and in
[00:44:59] fact, eh, what happens, what can be said is
[00:45:02] that oil companies, like any other business, are
[00:45:06] currently in the right place, right time, at the right moment.
[00:45:10] and they have a period of very favorable
[00:45:13] results, we have 5 minutes and Alexandre, 2 and a half minutes
[00:45:17] for this question, of this type of measures, no, right, right
[00:45:20] Rui, eh, Galp in public internal documents but
[00:45:24] public, at the end of last year predicted that the refining margin in 2026
[00:45:27] would be $5.5 per barrel, instead of
[00:45:30] $5 it has had a refining margin of, if I'm not mistaken,
[00:45:34] $16 or $17 per barrel, the same Galp
[00:45:37] noted that each additional dollar of refining margin
[00:45:40] would correspond to an additional profit of something like 70 million euros if I'm not
[00:45:44] mistaken, what does this mean? it means, it comes from a supply
[00:45:48] constraint, right, right, right, right, decrease in
[00:45:51] capacity,
[00:45:54] I already responded, I'll respond later, what I think no one understands is that in the context
[00:45:58] of a crisis that is affecting, in terms of cost of living, the majority of the
[00:46:01] population in a particularly intense way, families and SMEs, that
[00:46:05] there is a part of the economy and a part of society that is
[00:46:09] making absolutely extravagant and extraordinary profits and is not
[00:46:12] called upon to contribute more. It does not
[00:46:14] pay more taxes when it has more profits,
[00:46:18] but it should pay even more, that is, it is not acceptable for the rest of society,
[00:46:21] of course it is politically
[00:46:25] palm tree politics closed a series of
[00:46:28] refineries when we had no refinery left in the
[00:46:31] corporate income tax on profits, they receive that, that is not
[00:46:35] true, so much so that it is not true, these profits are absolutely extraordinary, much
[00:46:39] beyond what is necessary, a good part much beyond,
[00:46:42] much beyond what, much beyond what oil companies
[00:46:46] anticipated, much beyond what they based their
[00:46:49] investment decisions on, so it's not here.
[00:46:54] eh the companies being affected adversely,
[00:46:56] setting maximum
[00:46:58] prices, I will only say one thing, it is what is done for a long time in Madeira, in the
[00:47:02] Azores, it is what is done in Poland and it works, and it works,
[00:47:06] therefore we can look at other examples, there is a technical
[00:47:09] discussion, there is a technical discussion to be had about what a
[00:47:12] reasonable margin is, when the margin is
[00:47:16] speculative and all that, surely it is a discussion I cannot have, I cannot have a technical
[00:47:19] discussion, it means that it manages to contain prices more than in others. So if I pass a law saying
[00:47:23] that the price does not rise, you will evaluate the benevolence of the law because the price did not rise, are
[00:47:27] we really having this conversation, because if your argument is to put the price lower, you will not have
[00:47:31] supply, you have supply, you have supply, you have supply anyway, the argument is that,
[00:47:35] even setting price ceilings, you continue to have supply
[00:47:37] in, Galp's profits, a large
[00:47:41] part, most of Galp's profits have to do with increases outside
[00:47:44] and national action, it comes from outside,
[00:47:47] secondly, there has been a structural decrease in refining capacity in
[00:47:51] Europe, there is what... joined the
[00:47:54] end of, I believe it was since July, perhaps you know better than me, I think it was since
[00:47:58] July that Russia prohibited the export of refined
[00:48:01] material, so all this made the
[00:48:04] available refining capacity for the market decrease significantly
[00:48:08] and that was it, it has nothing to do with factors in Portugal properly speaking that do not move, Galp is
[00:48:12] a company that few Portuguese people perhaps are aware of, with a big name, isn't
[00:48:15] it? And that led to this state of affairs.
[00:48:19] Now, if Portugal were an island... if there were no
[00:48:23] boats or planes, like North Korea, right? A North
[00:48:26] Korea where whoever tried to cross could get shot, then I believe that
[00:48:30] some of these tools could work. But when we do this kind of
[00:48:34] thing, perhaps the next refinery won't be in Portugal, it will be in a country with a government
[00:48:38] that offers more fiscal stability guarantees. And this is the reality. We
[00:48:41] can want to go against reality, but the reality,
[00:48:45] the reality is that factors of production do not go to places that have more fiscal predictability and
[00:48:48] better and that better compensate capital. This measure, this
[00:48:52] was a measure imposed by the European Commission
[00:48:55] in the crisis
[00:48:57] of 2022.
[00:49:06] The report of the results of the
[00:49:09] conclusion
[00:49:12] whether it's North Korean or not, and that all companies
[00:49:14] have written the report they
[00:49:18] wrote, will read the conclusions that were will read the
[00:49:20] conclusions.
[00:49:24] Pedro jokes - to conclude, to conclude, a note that I couldn't
[00:49:27] make earlier when you asked if a political turnaround is good, like the IRS issue
[00:49:31] or others, I won't go there. Is aspirin a good thing or not?
[00:49:35] It depends. If it's for a headache, yes, if it's for contraception, maybe not.
[00:49:38] Right? So, the IRS measure is a good measure if
[00:49:42] we want to help the disadvantaged, obviously not,
[00:49:45] because half the population doesn't receive a point. Now,
[00:49:48] if it's to give the economy greater competitiveness,
[00:49:52] to think about those who want to create jobs and wealth and
[00:49:55] try to decriminalize the creation of wealth so that more wealth is created, let's be
[00:49:59] rich, of course it's a good measure, not in this context, so measures must be
[00:50:03] evaluated according to their purposes. Pedro jokes, Alexandre Abreu, Nuno
[00:50:06] Ribeiro da Silva, thank you very much for your presence, that's all, this
[00:50:10] program is now available on RTPlay and as a podcast, next,
[00:50:13] Pedro André Esteves updates all the information here
[00:50:17] on RTP news. We return next Monday, have an
[00:50:21] excellent week.
[00:51:00] starting from the Vasco da Gama bridge and a route to Praça do
[00:51:03] Comércio, follow closely the Hyundai Half Marathon of
[00:51:07] Lisbon, this Sunday morning live
[00:51:11] on FTP
[00:51:13] Mundo.