National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) Limited has mentioned failure by some suppliers to deliver required volumes of fuel and government’s delays to pay suppliers as factors leading to erratic availability of fuel.
The explanation comes at a time Malawi is experiencing yet another episode of fuel scarcity, mostly affecting petrol in the past three weeks.
Desperate motorists have been forced to buy the commodity on the parallel market at between K10 000 and K12 000 per litre against the recommended pump price of K2 530 per litre.
In an interview on Tuesday, Nocma chief executive officer Clement Kanyama said one of the suppliers, Hapco FZE, which was scheduled to deliver 21.9 million litres of petrol through Dar es Salaam port in Tanzania, only managed to bring five million litres.
He said: “This means the country has yet to receive 16 million litres. Due to challenges of berthing at the port of Dar es Salaam, the ship could not berth in April and May and an alternative port had been identified at Tanga.
“Hapco FZE sourced the product from a supplier who wanted to deliver the product to Burundi. They were concerned about when the product was going to be discharged and whether that product was really for Malawi.”
In the circumstances, Kanyama said it took the intervention of Minister of Energy Ibrahim Matola and Tanzanian officials to allow the vessel at Tanga.
“As of Friday and Saturday, procedures relating to discharge were carried out. They include carrying out tests and discharging is underway. The product will be received in Malawi in the next 14 days,” he said.
On the issue of delayed payments, Kanyama said they owe Addax Energy SA, which supplies from Beira in Mozambique, about $38 million (K65.8 billion) against a ceiling of $30 million (around K51.9 billion).
He said: “We actually paid $24 million, which meant we created a space to be able to load. But because the payment had been done a little bit late, their product in Beira was not available at the time so we kept on bringing in volumes from the port of Dar es Salaam.
“We continue to engage our suppliers so that they can make the product available in Beira.”
Kanyama said berthing of a ship to Beira takes between 60 and 100 days, a move that prompted Nocma to engage Beira-based suppliers with petrol stocks on the ground to supply 15 million litres, but only three million litres were delivered.
Nocma deputy CEO Micklas Reuben added that they expected additional six million litres of fuel from Addax while a third supplier, Augusta Energy, was also pushing to have additional fuel as it has already been given two letters of credit.
Meanwhile, between Friday and Saturday, the country received 129 trucks of petrol and 45 of diesel from Dar es Salaam port for Nocma.
Transporters Association of Malawi spokesperson Frank Banda said 93 trucks are from Dar es Salaam while 60 were dispatched to Tanga for the Hapco FZE fuel.
On his part, Petroleum Importers Limited (PIL) general manager Martin Msimuko said the private sector oil-importing consortium has continued to load fuel through Beira and that some of it arrived in the country earlier this week.
“We had seven million litres of petrol and 10 million litres of diesel being loaded,” he said.
Nocma and PIL are each supposed to import 50 percent of the country’s required volumes, but the State-owned Nocma has of late been importing up to 80 percent of total stocks.
Nocma data show that Malawi uses one million litres of petrol and 850 000 litres of diesel in a day, translating to a combined 55.5 million litres a month.
Malawi spends about $600 million (around K1 trillion) on fuel importation per year, according to the Reserve Bank of Malawi. In total, the country needs $3 billion to meet its import requirements against $1 billion foreign exchange earnings.
Forex scarcity in recent years has compounded importation of fuel.
