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29 November 2024
Feedback reported to the Malta Chamber of SMEs on Black Friday results indicates mixed outcomes....
GRTU in support of IRU resolution
14 July 2008
GRTU members UBS (Unscheduled Bus Services) represent Maltese passenger coach owners at the International Road Transport Union (IRU). UBS president Dr George Hizzler attended the extraordinary meeting of IRU held last month.
The conference was especially convened to discuss the problems currently being suffered by professional road transporters as the Governments in European Member States continue to procrastinate and fail t take remedial action to relieve professional road transporters of the excessive price of fuels, loaded as it is by high fiscal and tax impositions.
The resolution of the IRU conference are as follows:
- recognise the irreplaceable role road transport plays in each country as a production tool, interconnecting all businesses and people and in driving the economic, social and environmental objectives of sustainable development, the UN’s Millennium Goals and the EU’s Lisbon Agenda and to restore the appropriate market conditions permitting the road transport operators to pass on costs to clients;
- stop penalising road transport, and economies as a whole, by withdrawing the current inappropriate and provocative proposal on the internalisation of external costs and reduce the overall fiscal and heavy tax burden on road transport operators;
- have intergovernmental institutions permit national governments the flexibility to introduce revision to taxation including the excise duty and VAT for professional road transport operators;
- in order to level the playing field between all transport modes, introduce a single professional fuel duty – significantly below the current minimum duty – applicable to all passenger and goods commercial transport industries that is, road, air, rail and maritime transport;
- implement these measures immediately to demonstrate to road transport operators that their severe concerns are finally being heard and to urgently enter into a constructive dialogue with the road transport industry.
