While appearing on The Rundown talk show on Monday evening Prime Minister, the Hon. Philip Davis revealed that the government intends to raise the profit margin for petroleum retailers by $0.25 for fuel and $0.15 for diesel.

Mr. Davis said, “the resolve is that there will be an increase in their margin both for gas and diesel added to their margin and it will not have, as I said, the deleterious effect on the Bahamian public as it would have done if we had done it much earlier.”

Petroleum retailers have been advocating for a margin increase for some time lamenting about their overhead costs such as salaries.  President of the Bahamas Petroleum Retailers Association (BPRA), Raymond Jones reacted to the promised profit  margin increase on Tuesday.   He said, “this margin increase is something that we think is livable and palatable for the motoring public but also something that gave us the ability to feed our families, to look after our employees and also to spend the time to try to improve our service level to the public who are the reason we can operate.”

BPRA Vice President, Vasco Bastian has been the face of the fight for a profit margin increase.  He said, “this is a happy day.  We want to publicly, publicly thank the Prime Minister for all that he has done, for all that they have done to make sure this day happened.”

The Prime Minister did not state when the new profit margin will take effect.