Normally ZERA waits until its late Sunday evening before they belt us with the week’s fuel price increase. It has been our weekly shamhu and we were getting used to it. This week however it seems they could not wait to unleash another fuel price increase, hot on the heels of a ZESA power tariff hike.

New fuel prices

	Diesel ZWL$/Litre	Petrol E20 ZWL$/Litre
FOB	0.6038	0.5579
Exchange Rate	13	13
Duty(ZIMRA Exchange Rate-15.2611)	4.1676	4.3729
Oil Company Margin	0.8273	0.7920
Dealer Margin	1.0231	0.9795
Maximum Pump Price	15.64	14.97

This means that Diesel prices have gone up by $3.22 up from last week’s $12.42. Petrol also went up by $3.21 to $14.97. These are pretty steep hikes that will have a reverberating effect throughout the economy as manufacturers and another week of price increases, this is after a ZESA tariff hike too.

The increase in fuel prices can be attributed to:

The FOB of both Petrol (E20) and Diesel went up slightly
The government adjusted it’s exchange rate from $9.50 last week to $13.00 this week. This is still below the interbank rate, however, fuel is taxed too so the price is on par with regional prices.
The ZIMRA exchange rate also went up
The dealer margin all went up

The sum of these little changes is the massive hike we are seeing. Businesses don’t seem to be minding these changes as they happily pass them onto the consumer and even ask for more hikes, shocking. However, this could well end up in a vicious cycle as workers demand wage hikes too.