Fuel crisis deepens

Zimbabwe’s month-long diesel shortage looks set to worsen with reports on Thursday of people queuing for hours for fuel in the capital Harare. A spokeswoman for Mobil Oil Zimbabwe told IRIN that the situation was “very serious” and that a resolution to the current crisis was “unlikely in the foreseeable future.” She added: “The industry is likely to face frequent shortages and in fact stock levels are currently so low that it will take some time to re-build the country’s reserves.” The spokeswoman said that Mobil service stations were among those outlets experiencing shortages, but said a team within the oil industry was working to ensure that “essential services were not disrupted.” Analysts told IRIN the current shortage was partly because of the “general economic situation” in Zimbabwe, but it was also because of mismanagement at the state-owned fuel company, NOCZIM. “The company has a massive debt and simply does not have enough money at this point to import enough fuel for the country.” Recently the government said that it planned to issue a government bond on the domestic money market to raise money for NOCZIM. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association told IRIN that the shortage had severely affected the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans. “Some public transport buses have had to be grounded, which has meant a large number of people are experiencing difficulty in getting to and from work,” the spokesman said. Media reports in Zimbabwe on Thursday quoted the Commercial Farmers Union as saying that the shortage had disrupted tobacco harvesting, which accounts for an estimated 30 percent of the country’s export earnings.