Fuel prices skyrocket to $10.71 a gallon

Ten dollars and seventy one cents, that’s the new price of a gallon of premium gasoline in Belize City. Unbelievably, out in the districts that figure is even closer to eleven dollars. Today News Five’s Karla Vernon and Alyssa Noble stalked fuel pumps across the city and found desperate motorists trying to squeeze every possible shilling out their budgets.

Steve Anthony
?Well I rather fill it up twenty dollars at a time because it seems like your not spending as much. You try to fill up you gas tank at one time you gwen bruk.?

Alyssa Noble
?How much would you say you spend a month in terms of gas??

Isabel Nisbet
?In terms of gas per week I spend like one hundred forty-hundred dollars compared to maybe a year ago, a year and a half ago it was like maybe between eighty to ninety dollars, so it is a lot more.?

Michael Finnegan
?You know how much dallas it tek fi full this vehicle? One hundred ninety-four dollas fi full this vehicle, look at the meter rite now, when few months ago it used to tek one hundred fifty odd dollas fu full the vehicle. You see di increase??

Linsford Mckenzie
?See when I di run a job, I no mind, I could afford it, but when things slow then I have to buy wah li five dollas gas. Sometimes when I could afford it I buy a li gallon.?

Alyssa Noble
?What?s the lowest gas that someone has ever come and asked you for??

Steve Parks, Gas station attendant
?About five to three dollars, about three dollars.?

Harry Lui, Manager of Texaco North Star Service Station on the Northern Highway says the rising price of gasoline is negatively affecting his business.

Harry Lui, Manager Texaco North Star
?They are buying less. They are buying less, and everybody wants credit, but yu know we have to pay the oil company cash up front. This morning I got four thousand gallons, it was thirty-four thousand dollars. Cash up front. I can?t give people credit. I have to sell for cash.?

The new prices have brought new reality to other businesses as well.

Alexander Daniels, Taxi Driver
?Well recently I had a big car and I just had to downsize on the car. And I had a big car and the gas price really no di cut it for me. I no di see no profit, or not even wah profit, I can?t even call it a profit because some days I go home without nothing. I live all the way in Sand Hill and certain days I would have to catch the bus, leave the car in town.?

Adrian Rodriguez, Action Belize Travel and Tours
?Well nowadays I think it woulda tek probably bout fifty gallons to seventy gallons to go fram ya to San Pedro round trip. Price a gas rite now da bout ten dollas wah gallon so you look pan seven hundred dollars fi one trip from here to San Pedro and back.?

?Fishing trips we cut down big time, you know what I mean, and the thing is Belize seem kinda expensive as compared to a lot of Central American countries. And when you have a lot of tourists coming in they di wonda why the prices fi go out fishing so high and they don?t realize that gas is one of the main reasons.?

Presently Belmopan?s tax bite is approximately forty-five percent of fuel price. A fact that doesn?t go down well with consumers.

Alexander Daniels
?One thing could come thing could come to my mind, as to weh deh mi do with the cane farmers. Give them like duty free gasoline or something like dat. Dat woulda be wah big push for us. Then we no have to sacrifice or squeeze di customer cause everybody feel the pinch of it. Anyway you tek it everybody feel the pinch of it.?

Alyssa Noble
?Do you own a car??

Steve Parks
?No, not presently. I used to, but with these prices its rough.?

Karla Vernon for News Five.

According to our records, in the year 2000, premium gasoline cost five dollars and seventy five cents a gallon. The next year, that price shot up by fifty three cents to six dollars and twenty eight cents. In 2002, prices jumped forty cents to six sixty-eight. 2003, saw a eighty-seven cent increase from six sixty eight to seven fifty five. In 2004, prices only went up fifty cents to eight dollars and five cents. Then came 2005, and for the first time ever, the price of gasoline hit the ten dollar mark.