By MOZTIMES
Maputo (MOZTIMES) – On Sunday, the Mozambican government insisted, for the second time in 24 hours, that there is no genuine fuel crisis.
But, for five consecutive days, long queues of vehicles lined up at the fuel pumps in Maputo and other cities, in attempts to buy a few litres of petrol or diesel.
The government had no choice but to admit this reality, which it blamed on hoarding or “problems of liquidity”.
A Sunday press release from the government press office (Gabinfo) insisted that there is fuel in the country but admitted that it might not be making its way from the ports to the fuel pumps because the companies that own the pumps are facing “treasury problems”.
Under normal circumstances, fuel distributors use bank guarantees, denominated in US dollars, to pay for the fuel they order at the ports. Gabinfo said that some of the distributors had told the government that they have been unable to acquire these guarantees from the commercial banks.
These distributors are decapitalised and so are unable to acquire any guarantees. They wanted the Bank of Mozambique to step in and issue the guarantees.
Gabinfo says that, among the emergency measures the government has taken, are extending the period of validity of bank guarantees so that the distributors can strengthen their liquidity, and banning the re-export of fuel.
Gabinfo accused some, unnamed, distributors of hoarding. They had acquired fuel at the ports, but did not put it immediately into their own tanks.
Ministry inspection teams had visited filling stations on Saturday and had found situations in which distributors had only put half the fuel acquired at the ports into their tanks. It looked as if these companies were hoarding large amounts of fuel which they only intended to release when the price went up.
Unlike most southern African countries, so far Mozambique has not increased fuel prices. But Gabinfo warned that prices are bound to rise in the near future, thanks to the war waged by the United States and Israel against Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of oil and gas traded globally used to pass.
Mozambique could afford not to increase prices, because its stocks were purchased at the pre-crisis prices, at a time when the Strait of Hormuz was open. But the next shipments of fuel, Gabinfo warned, will be at the new, post-crisis prices – and nobody yet knows how high the new prices will be.
The government, said the Gabinfo release, “will continue to protect the Mozambican economy, households and citizens, while the country prepares in the near future to update fuel prices”, since the next shipments will be acquired when international pieces are much higher.
The goverment, Gabinfo said, “urges everyone to prepare, calmly and serenely, for ‘the new normal’ which continued instability in the Middle East may cause, by rationalising the use of fuel, by using public transport, by working from home, and taking whatever other measures may be necessary” to reduce the consumption of liquid fuels. (MT)
