Fuel crisis could worsen

The National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM) said it has received US $10 million from the Metropolitan Bank of Zimbabwe under a facility to import fuel, the ‘Financial Gazette’ reported on Thursday. But NOCZIM warned that the country would plunge into a deeper fuel crisis unless a permanent solution is found to the present hard currency shortage.

NOCZIM chief executive Webster Muriritirwa said on Wednesday that the US $10 million, part of a US $30 million facility arranged by Metropolitan, was exhausted within a week and that the state-run fuel procurement agency had since struggled to raise funds to import fuel from other sources. Metropolitan Bank last month unveiled the US $30 million facility to enable NOCZIM to import fuel using Zimbabwe dollars, a development then seen as one of the permanent solutions to Zimbabwe’s fuel problems.

Muriritirwa said Zimbabwe’s fuel crisis could deteriorate over the next few months as a result of this month’s closure of the life-saving tobacco marketing season. Zimbabwe, mired in an acute shortage of fuel since the end of last year due to a biting hard cash crisis, requires about US$40 million a month to import fuel.

A spokesman for the country’s oil companies confirmed yesterday that the inland supply of fuel was still critical. NOCZIM has struggled to pay for fuel imports over the past year due to the shortage of foreign currency. The shortages of both hard currency and fuel are contributing to an economic crisis that may see many companies failing to re-open after the December holiday period.