15.09.2023, Budapest.
Oil supplied from Russia to Hungary will become 3.5 times more expensive due to an increase in transit rates through Ukraine, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on September 15 on the air of Radio Kossuth.
“This gives me something to think about when I see that the Ukrainians have raised the oil transit rate and supplies from Russia through Ukraine have become 3.5 times more expensive,” he said.
As a result of taking these tariffs into account, private companies will have to pay an additional 48 billion forints (13 billion rubles) for the delivered oil, which will result in higher fuel prices and lead to accelerating inflation, the Hungarian prime minister said.
Orban assured radio listeners that the government would take all possible measures to ensure that such a policy would not be continued and “the fee for the use of the pipe will not rise to the sky, which will put Hungarian families in a difficult situation”.
“Ukraine has no money, fewer and fewer weapons: it is clear that they need to make money from something,” he added, emphasizing that as head of the Hungarian government he would take his country’s interests into account.
The Minister of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás said on September 13 that Ukraine had raised the cost of transit of Russian oil through a section of the Druzhba pipeline running through its territory by five times. As a result, Hungary was forced to pay 3.5 times higher price for the supplied hydrocarbons, which affected the cost of fuel at gas stations in the country, adding 0.5 percent to the inflation rate.
This slowed down the decrease in inflation. “Raising transit fees contradicts all criteria and recommendations,” Gulyás said.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
