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Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary
"There are two things here. The pump price at a gas station in Florida in Miami or in Houston and the pump price in Belize are two different stories all together. It is a volume game it is one small city in the United State consumes more fuel than the entire city of Belize so it's a volume game. Remember they're closer to the refining aspect as well. When we in Belize by the time we pay the freight the insurance and so there is added cost that you don't see and so it's a volume thing you know. When it comes to our relief for prices we still have a program where we stabilise the price at the pump for regular gasoline and diesel. We are stabilising the price going now for over a year and that means the price is fixed and we use the excise tax as a shock absorber to up and down. To maintain that level price hood is predictability and people know what the price of gas will be next week and maybe next month ha. Now to do that the price the excise taxes we are charging even today is much less then previously where it was before the war un Ukraine and before the increase in prices and so the government is still taking a notional loss every time we sell a gallon because we are not getting the same level of tax we would have gotten say back in 2020 or 2021. Over the last 12 month the lost ad it's notional is about 30 million dollars. Currently it fluctuates by month depending on where the taxes are. Currently I think we are losing about a million dollars a month but it can go up or down yeah it can go up or down."

Reporter:
"So then what's the situation with the contingency fund and it being replenished."

Joseph Waight, Financial Secretary
"Well the contingency fund is basically for, it's not a revenue replacement fund it's a small amount of money for urgent and unforeseen expenditures like a hurricane or something. But it's not to replace revenue that um.. to replace revenue lost from the fuel.