"Coalition Canaria and the Popular Party have refused to subsidize fuel in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura as they already do in El Hierro, La Palma and La Gomera", according to the PSOE. The main parties that make up the Government of the Canary Islands have rejected the Non-Law Proposal (PNL) presented by the Socialist Parliamentary Group in which it asked to "face this extra cost" for the two islands with the lowest average income in the Canary Islands.
The initiative was presented at the request of the deputies for Lanzarote Marcos Hernández, Lucía Olga Tejera, Marcos Bergaz and Alicia Pérez, as well as for Fuerteventura, Manuel Hernández and Rosa Bella Cabrera.
Specifically, the proposal urges the Government of the Canary Islands to extend the extraordinary and temporary bonuses of the final price of certain fuels derived from oil refining established for El Hierro, La Palma and La Gomera to the islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, quantifying them at least 40% of those planned for the green islands, which is between eight and ten cents per liter.
The socialist deputy for Fuerteventura, Manuel Hernández, expressed his support for the bonus for the green islands, and considered that not extending it proportionally by at least 40% to the islands of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, places them in a “situation of marginalization” and causes an “injustice.”
In addition, he recalled in the plenary session that the high increase in the price of fuel in the Canary Islands has been an element that has contributed in recent years to hindering the competitiveness of the islands' economy, and that it is controlled in its entirety by four large oil operators, resulting in limited competition that has direct effects on the behavior of a sector of vital importance in the economic development of the islands.
According to the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics (ISTAC), Tenerife and Gran Canaria are the islands with the cheapest fuels due to greater competition in supply, while El Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma have the most expensive fuels, and Lanzarote and Fuerteventura remain in intermediate values, which range between 10 and 20 cents more expensive than the regional average.
Hernández indicated that after the bonus approved by the Government of Spain of 20 cents per liter of fuel to face the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine, the Canary Islands Government has included in the Draft Law of General Budgets of the Canary Islands for 2024 the same bonus for El Hierro, La Palma and La Gomera, “but without articulating aid to face the extra cost of fuel in Fuerteventura and Lanzarote.”
In this sense, he warned that the extra cost in these islands with respect to the average price in the Canary Islands is marked by the average prices of Tenerife and Gran Canaria, where competition is greater, in addition to the lower income availability of these two islands and the lower spending margin of the inhabitants of the eastern islands.
In addition, he pointed out that Fuerteventura and Lanzarote are the islands with the lowest average income per person in the Canary Islands according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE) itself, so “the time has come” to articulate support measures for these two islands to face these extra costs, measures weighted quantitatively on the reference established in the Draft Budget Law and the extra cost that it represents for consumers in these islands with respect to the average price in the Canary Islands.
