The government has announced a five per cent fuel price hike effective effective midnight today.
Energy Regulation Board (ERB) executive director Langiwe Lungu stated that the pump price of diesel and petrol has gone up by an average K0.80.
A liter of petrol will now fetch for K15.98 from K15.20 while diesel will be sold at K14.23 from K13.43, representing an increase of K0.78 and K0.80 respectively.
A liter of low sulphur diesel is now K16.52 from K15.72 while Kerosene has recorded the highest price hike from K11.34 to K13.02.
According to Lungu, ERB has also increased the Tazama Petroleum Products Limited (TPPL) throughput fee at the Ndola Fuel Terminal and other national fuel depots from K25 per cubic metro to K62.64 per cubic metro.
One Response
Proposed Fuel price hike!!!
Fuel has become an indispensable part of our day-to-day life, and we can’t imagine our life without it. But the fuel prices are sky rocketing, and it is eventually going to affect each and everything that we use in our day to day life too much. Poor people are already working hard to earn square meal a day and this proposed (5%)? hike is definitely going to paralyze these already-burdened people. Within three years fuel price has increased many times and is still increasing! It is nothing but adding fuel to the fire. Fuel price hike directly or indirectly affects all the major sectors like transportation, auto etc. This affects the prices of daily essential commodities which are transported on a daily basis. Banking sector is also expected to suffer due to high inflation level.
Increase in fuel price will also trigger increase in food prices. This will have a more severe impact on poor people because poor households spend more than half of their income on food and only a tenth on fuel. It is a chain reaction once started will affect all. Increase in fuel price will increase the transportation cost, increase in transportation cost will increase in price of goods, and this increase in price of goods would gradually force the people to loosen their pockets even more, and so on like this, the chain will further propagate. These ups and downs push more people into poverty and leading to a more pathetic situation of those already poor. This has obviously sent shock waves to the common man who is trying hard to make both ends meet. Price hike affects only the low wages or fixed salaried middle class families as compared to higher wages salaried class. Rich and corrupted people are least bothered of it. Business class like auto-rickshaw drivers shall transfer the burden to common people so they are also safe. Common people if doing business shall also pass the burden to customers and chain reactions. The community that suffers the most is the common people.
So what are we thinking? For the situation to get worse or are we waiting for such a heroic person who’ll bring us out of this situation. No, we, the people are the one to do something and control the situation. Stop blaming government and think how to solve it. We Zambians import oil from different countries. We don’t have enough oil to meet our requirements. So we have to depend on import of oil. If there is increase in international price then we have to bear price hike in Zambia also. Then value of kwacha in comparison with dollar is becoming weaker in international market. Increase in number of vehicles also causes hike in fuel prices.
So the thing we can do is to reduce oil consumption by using public transport for travelling to routine places like our office, markets etc. Use of cycles to go to nearby places instead of bikes or cars. Cutting off fuel supply or switching the engine off when traffic is halted for long. Developing alternate sources of energy like solar energy etc. Development of bio-diesel, and government should allocate more funds for developing alternate sources of energy as well as develop high capacity goods and public transport system. I am not an economic expert but I hold this opinion.