An article in today’s Hospodarske Noviny points to a substantial 10% drop in the volume of petrol consumption in Slovakia, showing how thrifty people have become since the crisis.
The drop in consumption in Slovakia was possibly double that of its neighbours, according to Jan Toth from the Financial Policy Institute at the Ministry of Finance. This is great news for environmentalists, but the other side is a loss of excise and tax revenue for the government, being projected at tens of millions of euro p.a.
Petrol is more expensive in Slovakia than in neighbouring countries, and so the Financial Policy Institute wants to do a cross-analysis of taxes and commodities to find out why.
Apart from the obvious rising cost of petrol, other reasons for the drop can only be speculated, with talk of people maybe switching to diesel or the growing trend of petrol tourism in border areas, as locals hop across the border to fill up.