By Adia Jildo
Authorities in Yei River County have reportedly closed petrol stations for the reason that owners of the gasoline have increased the price of fuel.
“Two days ago, the managers of petrol stations took up unilateral decisions without informing relevant authorities and hiked the fuel price. The government, chamber of commerce and traders have to sit down and come up with an agreeable price that will be fixed for all the stations,” the chairperson for Chamber of Commerce in Yei River County Luate Justin Raphae said.
Mr. Lowate said the decision inflicted chaos and subsequently closed down the stations, except one station that did not increase its price.
In addition, Luate stated that the already hiked commodity prices are likely to double due to blockage of tracks by people from Koboko to enter South Sudan following the killing of two Ugandan traders along Yei – Kaya road.
“Traders were unable to access most of their suppliers which led to the scarcity of goods and hiking of prices as well. We are expecting things to be worse with the increase of fuel prices,” he said.
Thus, he called on county’s traders to work within a minimum margin as all people are struggling for survival but not to harm each other.
Luate also blamed government for the hike in prices of commodities, saying authorities are collecting multiple taxes as it led to business failure.
“We have the national revenue authority, state, county and payam revenue authority. Traders are being taxed by different levels of government. These taxes are not appropriate in terms of calculations,” he explained.
He urged the authority to be considerate on taxation policy in Yei, sating that the taxes are extremely high.
When asked about the compression of commodity prices in Yei, Mr. Lowate said the difference of prices is not a factor for heavy taxation, uttering that Juba businesses are flourishing not like Yei businesses.
“You cannot tax the business in Yei equally to the business in Juba. There must be some differentiation based on the performance of these business but they don’t put this into consideration,” Luate said.