Stepping into the same river again: retail fuel prices to be administratively capped from midnight

HUNGARY - In Brief 09 Mar 2026 by Istvan Racz
It has just been announced that the government cabinet has decided to set an administrative cap on retail fuel prices, effective midnight today. These will be HUF595 per litre for gasoline and HUF615 per litre for diesel, in both cases for the leading products on the market. These prices will have to be made available to all cars, trucks, agricultural vehicles, etc. with domestically issued licences and Hungarian licence plates.The above-mentioned price caps are significantly below what MOL's wholesale prices would imply in retail fuel sales tomorrow. Estimating the difference is somewhat tricky, but our best effort in this regard puts the difference to around 3%, by which retailers will have to reduce their prices from where they would put those from tomorrow without the restriction. There is no news for now on who will swallow that difference, but judging on the basis of past experience, the government is unlikely to offer any contribution to retailers' extra costs, at least for now. It needs to be noted that fuel retailing is a private business with a rather low average profit margin, if any at all. MOL, the effective domestic oil monopoly and by far the biggest wholesaler also has a significant retail network of gas stations. As the Reader is perfectly aware, MOL is a publicly traded private company, which on the other hand is managed with significant government influence. We have got a deja vu feeling when hearing this announcement. Price caps were actually applied already between mid-November and 2021 and early December 2022, when it had to be given up because of a severe product shortage. This time around, the situation is aggravated by circumstances like the in...

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