Service Operators Complain About Unfair Foreign Currency Allocation

A representative from the Indigenous Petroleum Group of Zimbabwe (IPGZ) has told the Parliament that its members are not getting enough foreign currency allocation from the Central Bank to purchase enough fuel to sell in their institutions.

IPGZ want a fair share in terms of allocation from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ).

“If you look into this fuel industry, Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) has licensed more than 40 companies for fuel importing and they are the top 5 which are normally recognised from the Reserve Bank in terms of allocation in acquiring fuel,” said IPGZ representative.

“Our concern is we also want RBZ to consider our member about 28 companies of us… lets have a fair share of the cake in terms of allocation from the RBZ.”

In response to the IPGZ complaint, ZERA, which also plays a part in allocations for companies attributed the foreign currency distribution to the market performance.

“Every company has got an obligation to give us traded fuel update on a monthly basis,” said ZERA representatives. “It’s actually a license condition . All these companies actually give us to what extent and what volumes they have sold into the market.

“So that basically determines their sort of the share of the market That becomes the basis upon which we then provide that information to RBZ to say this is the performance of these companies can we then try to use some kind of criteria that goes along with what we are actually putting in the market.” sic

RBZ allocated $88,8 million of foreign currency to the importation of fuel in May this year.

The Indigenous Petroleum Group is already in talks with the RBZ through ZERA on a fair allocation of resource.

“I felt we should register our concern, if our discussions with RBZ through ZERA does not come as expected,” said the indigenous companies representative. “We feel out of the 100 percentage let’s get a percentage because some of our members, they are actually selling the fuel to the industry, mining sector but they don’t have enough foreign currency allocation”