Sigh of relief as petrol queues ease
Motorists can afford to smile as petrol queues they have endured these past three or so weeks have eased amid a pledge by National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) to make fuel shortages history.
Snap checks at service stations in Blantyre, Lilongwe, Mzuzu, Zomba, Mangochi and Salima yesterday, showed motorists were refuelling on the go for both petrol and diesel with few stations having small queues.
Eyewitnesses said in Lilongwe, the situation started improving on Sunday while in Blantyre and Mzuzu the improvement was experienced from late Monday. However, most service stations in Zomba had more diesel stocks than petrol.
“It’s like I am dreaming. Imagine, getting to a pump station and refilling on the go, I pray this is permanent because things were really getting out of hand,” said one motorist interviewed in Blantyre yesterday.
Responding to a questionnaire yesterday, Nocma spokesperson Rex Chikoko said the improvement signifies that the fuel shortage situation is slowly returning to normal.
He said efforts were being put in place to ensure that fuel is always available.
Chikoko said: “Nocma has introduced a fuel preload system and distributes fuel twice daily, in the morning and evening to reduce queuing. It has also diversified the ports of loading to increase simultaneous inflows of fuel from the ports of Beira and Nacala in Mozambique and the ports of Dar es Salaam and Tanga in Tanzania.”
He said the fuel imports were made possible by improved sources of fuel financing with the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (Badea) providing a $50 million facility declared effective on November 10 2022 and upon sourcing $10 million from the local banks.
However, Chikoko hinted that the fundamentals that contributed to the fuel shortage, mainly the shortage of foreign exchange to service the facilities remain challenging.
From November 1 2022, Nocma has imported an additional 15 million litres of petrol and diesel while a total of 22.1 million litres (10.6 million petrol and 11.5 million diesel) is expected in the next couple of days from November 15 2022.
In an earlier interview, Petroleum Importers Limited (PIL) general manager Martin Msimuko said the consortium of private sector oil marketing companies is working to beef up fuel stocks in the country.
On Monday, PIL offloaded one million litres of diesel brought into the country by rail from Nacala Port.
Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority data shows that on average Malawians use 845 000 litres of petrol and 834 000 litres of diesel a day.
Dwindling foreign exchange reserves have in recent months stifled fuel imports, forcing some oil marketing companies to ration both diesel and petrol.
The National Energy Policy stipulates that by 2022, 30 percent of fuel must be imported by road through the Dar es Salaam Corridor in Tanzania, 50 percent through Beira in Mozambique and 20 percent by rail through the Nacala Corridor.
