Economy 2 May 2024, 10:15am

Major changes in Hungarian fuel prices

Portfolio

There have been considerable changes in Hungarian fuel prices over the last few days, fuel price tracking site holtankoljak.hu reported on Thursday.

UPDATE: An extraordinary price change in Hungarian fuel prices has been announced for Saturday, with the price of petrol and diesel set to be lowered by HUF 4 per litre.

No wholesale price changes will be announced this week in consideration of the 1 May holiday (Labour Day), but there have been significant changes in retail prices already.

On 29 April, Mol cut both petrol and diesel retail prices by gross HUF 10 per litre,

and then by a further HUF 3 each on 1 May. Market players have more or less adapted to the situation on the market and similar price reductions can be observed at other petrol stations. Accordingly, the average prices at the pumps are as follows:

95-octane petrol: HUF 635 /litre
Diesel: HUF 622 /litre

The price of petrol rose HUF 65 (+11.4%) and the price of diesel by HUF 29 (+4.9%) since the beginning of the year.

In any case, in the past few weeks, since the beginning of April, the purchase price of diesel has fallen sharply, and we have seen this at Hungarian petrol stations, mainly because of this,

A LITRE OF DIESEL COSTS 13 FORINTS MORE THAN A LITRE OF PETROL.

How will the government decide?

Economy Minister Márton Nagy warned fuel traders on 25 April they had two weeks to bring their prices closer to the regional average. The Hungarian Statistical Office (KSH) was asked to release its own data on regional fuel prices, and the government is set to decide whether to intervene on the market or not in light of how domestic prices compare with that average.

The problem - first pointed out by Portfolio - was that the stats office included distant countries such as Czechia, Poland and Bulgaria in the regional average, greatly distorting it. Industry experts also complained that only the prices in neighbouring countries should be used when calculating the average, given that they are the ones Hungarians may drive to top up their tanks if they live relatively close to the border and find local prices too high.

The KSH paid attention to said complaints and in its next release it calculated average petrol and diesel prices not only for CEE but also for just the neighbouring countries. While it is unclear which average the government will use to decide whether to intervene or not, minister Nagy said earlier this week

It's a good idea, an appropriate notion, to use the average fuel price of neighbouring countries as a benchmark, rather than the average fuel price of the region... We will consider this.

KSH's statistics (based on the European Commission's Weekly Oil Bulletin) show that the average price of petrol in Hungary was HUF 20 higher (+3.2%) than the CEE average and the difference for diesel was HUF 15 (+2.4%).

However, compared to the average of the neighbouring countries Hungary's average petrol price was only HUF 5 (+0.8%) higher and diesel cost a single forint (+0.2%). more.

The differences shrank considerably from a week ago. (The table contains data for 2024 alone.)

The graphs below show the evolution of average fuel prices in Hungary, the wider region and Hungary's neighbouring countries since the start of 2023. For your convenience we also have graphs showing only how much higher (very seldom lower) Hungary's fuel prices are compared to its neighbours or the select CEE countries.

You may also want to see the prices in the individual countries included in the averages. The latest data published by the European Commission, which the KSH will also use for its own statistics to be released on Friday, show that Hungarian prices are no longer in the Top3.