Question 1724 — overseas

Summary

Mr. Jean-Victor Castor draws the attention of the Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry to report No. 2022-M-002-04 of the IGF and the follow-up that will be given to it. On September 4, the Government published the report on the regulation of fuel and gas prices in the French departments of America. This report, commissioned in January 2022, was to analyze the price structure in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana, where the SARA's monopoly strongly influences prices. It took two years of incessant questioning and a referral to the CADA to finally have access to the report concerned. Despite its incompleteness (due to "business secrecy"), this report was unable to conceal the lack of transparency (not to say opacity) of the method of calculation, nor the highly inflationary effects of the price-fixing system, particularly for the Guyana. This report thus highlights "significant weaknesses in the regulation of the SARA monopoly", including: a fixed remuneration of 23 million euros per year guaranteed to SARA and distributed in full to shareholders, the absence of analytical accounting for the company which self-monitors, in the face of State services considered "particularly disempowered", the integration into the formula of calculation of sales prices, expenses generated by SARA's other activities and therefore unrelated to the production of fuel at a regulated price (investments in ENR, manufacture and sale of unregulated fuels, etc.), a Guyanese market supplied mainly by finished products from Europe and therefore having undergone neither processing nor storage in SARA facilities in the Antilles, the absence of commissions dedicated to fuels in the DFA, despite a 2009 opinion from the Competition Authority and decree 2013-1314 of December 27, 2013, the non-opening to competition of SARA's storage tanks, although provided for in article 11 of the 2013 decree (supra), supplemented by an opinion from the Competition Authority in 2015. In fact, opening up to competition is unachievable in the absence of appropriate prefectural decrees. In this case, by not forcing SARA to modify the customs status of its tanks, the State assumes protection of the company's monopoly, to the detriment of consumers. Among the recommendations proposed, some can be followed without delay through regulations. This is particularly the case of the transfer, naturally accompanied by the necessary human and material resources, of the regulation of SARA to the Regulation Commission of energy (CRE); the effective establishment of the fuel commissions of the Observatories of Prices, Margins and Revenues (OMPR) in the DFA or the obligation imposed on SARA to establish analytical accounting and to exclude from the price calculation formula elements linked to its competitive activities (ENR) - see proposal 8. The regional environment of Guyana also necessarily brings the question of supply, to in the short term, in fuel from the producing and exporting States that surround it. Finally, the geographical and geological particularity of Guyana and the context of exacerbated cost of living in so-called overseas countries urgently require laying the foundations for fairer methods and locations of supply of fuel and gas for Guyanese businesses and households. He would like to have his opinion on this subject.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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1. 5 November 2024

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