France unveiling aid to counter Ukraine war economic fallout

PARIS (AP) — France’s government was poised Wednesday to earmark millions worth of emergency aid for road haulage companies, fishing crews and other professions battered by fuel-price surges that are accompanying Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Prime Minister Jean Castex is expected to unveil a raft of economic assistance measures at a news conference.

Fuel-guzzling transport companies are among those who say they’re being asphyxiated by soaring prices. Some are warning that their survival can only be assured if they pass on their extra costs to consumers through increasing prices on food and other essentials.

Nourrédine Ziane, who runs MTS Transports in the Bordeaux region, thought it was a good investment when he started buying less polluting natural gas-powered trucks for his family-founded road haulage business. Last year, he was still paying just 60 euro cents (66 US$ cents) for the gas equivalent of a liter of diesel fuel. Now, as gas prices have soared with the tensions and then war in Ukraine, that same amount is sometimes costing him as much as 3 euros, he says.

Running his nine gas-powered vehicles has become so expensive that he has had to idle two of them.

“I feel like we are being taken hostage,” he said Wednesday in a phone interview before the prime minister's announcements.

Between paying for more expensive fuel and passing on much - but not all - of those extra costs to clients, there’s often weeks of delay, forcing him to drain company funds – by as much as 150,000 euros ($165,000) per month – to bridge that gap.

“We have to fight with clients to explain why it’s more expensive,” he said. Ziane is also the top representative in the southwestern Aquitaine region for a major French road haulage federation that is pushing for additional government aid.

“We...