PIL scales up fuel imports via rail

Petroleum Importers Limited (PIL) has moved to ensure security of fuel supply by scaling up importation of the commodity through rail with 11 wagons offloaded in Blantyre yesterday.

The development follows erratic availability of fuel, especially petrol, in some parts of Blantyre and surrounding districts over the past fortnight.

PIL, a consortium of private oil marketing companies, said the 11 wagons yesterday took delivery of about 446 000 litres of petrol hauled through rail from the Indian Ocean port of Nacala in  Mozambique.

The consortium said the consignment was enough to service motorists in Blantyre City and surrounding districts “for a few days”. Nationally, the amount could only last half a day based on the daily consumprion of about one million litres of petrol.

In a statement issued after the petrol was offloaded at depots in Makata Industrial Area and in Limbe, PIL general manager Martin Msimuko said they are committed to ensure the commodity’s availability.

“We will continue to utilise all possible routes to ensure enough fuel is imported. Today, we have brought in 446 000 litres by rail from Nacala and we expect another 255 000 within the week,” he said.

Msimuko said they want to continue to utilise all available routes, both rail and road, so that the country has enough stocks of fuel.

He said: “We are also loading diesel by rail 700 000 litres from the same port of Nacala. We are also in the process of loading close to three million litres of petrol to come by [road] trucks from the ports of Beira [in Mozambique] and Dar es Salaam [in Tanzania].”

But Msimuko said their efforts were being hampered by continued inadequacy of foreign exchange in the country.

“Forex still remains a major hurdle in bringing adequate fuel supplies, [but] we are engaging with commercial banks to support us with the same so that we can have adequate supplies in the country,” he said.

Last month, amidst another fuel scarcity in the country, officials from both Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (Mera) and National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) painted a gloomy picture.

Yesterday, both Mera and Nocma officials were not immediately available for comment on the matter.

But Nocma director of operations Micklas Reuben is on record to have told The Nation edition of August 11 that although fuel products are being hauled into the country, the commodity was not enough because importation had dropped to 40.8 million litres a month from the required 50 million due forex shortages.

Due to the low supply challenges, fuel shortages have affected businesses and way of life in the country, with long queues of motorists often spotted in all the major cities of Blantyre, Zomba, Lilongwe and Mzuzu looking for fuel.

The shortage is advantaging middlemen who are selling a litre of petrol for amounts ranging from K4 000 to K6 000 on the black market. Often the middlemen buy fuel in jerry cans and drums for reselling along the main highways and roads.

PIL imports about 248 million litres of Malawi’s fuel annually, estimated at 50 percent of the country’s fuel requirements while Nocma brings in the remaining half.