Some fuel dealers have been accused of causing artificial shortages of the product on the formal market by diverting large volumes of the commodity to the black market.
This was said by the National Oil Infrastructure Company (NOIC) chairman Daniel Mackenzie Ncube.
Mackenzie Ncube believes that there is a need to address the price distortions on the market as Zimbabwe’s fuel is considered to be the cheapest in the region. He said:
There is a need to address the price distortions on the market which is being manipulated by players in the fuel industry to drive up their profit margins by pushing the fuel into the black market.
It is clear that the fuel we release into the market is not being sold on the forecourt at service stations, but rather on the black market.
On Sunday alone, from the Msasa depot, we had loaded 3,386 million litres of diesel and 1,957 million litres of petrol.
This is a combined 5,343 million litres and you would have expected the fuel situation to be stable, but that’s not the case.