Western countries should stop complaining about rising oil prices because they created the problem and poorer importers suffer more, the Algerian daily government newspaper El Moudjahid commented Sunday.
The comments were published as ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) -- of which Algeria is a member -- were holding talks in Vienna at which they were under intense pressure to help ease soaring prices.
"Only Third World countries who import oil have a right to complain about higher oil prices, because the effect is harsher on their already over-burdened finances," El Moudjahid said.Developed countries make more than enough off oil-related taxes to withstand the increasing prices, the newspaper charged.
"Profits from taxes, duties and other forms of government income off oil are double what oil-producing countries earn from oil sales," it explained.
Besides, oil-producing countries have been saying for two decades that the fuel is a non-renewable natural resource whose "strategic character requires close co-ordination between consumers and producers," the newspaper stressed.
Instead, only the market determines oil prices, thanks to the "savage liberal economic policies between 1985 and 1986 of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher" -- then US president and British prime minister respectively.—AFP.
©--Agence France Presse.
