Fuel prices rise

The Mozambican government has increased the price of fuel by between 5.3 and 40.3 per cent, taking effect as from Saturday.Owners of petrol driven cars are let off fairly lightly. In the new price table issued by the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy, the price of a litre of petrol rises from 47.52 to 50.02 meticais, an increase of 5.3 per cent. But if the price is expressed in foreign currency, petrol is much cheaper than it was a couple of years ago, thanks to the sharp depreciation of the metical.In 2014, when expressed in US dollars, the price was about 1.6 dollars per litre. Today it is just 66 US cents per litre. Because of the exchange effect, fuel had become cheaper in Mozambique than in neighbouring countries, and so Zimbabwean motorists have been driving across the border to buy petrol from Mozambican filling stations.The price of diesel rises by 24,5 per cent, from 36.81 to 45.83 meticais a litre, while a litre of kerosene now costs 33.06 rather than 28.64 meticais, an increase of 15.4 per cent. Imported cooking gas rises in price by 5.6 per cent, form 55.45 to 58.54 meticais a kilo. But the sharpest increase is for compressed natural gas, where the price shoots up by 40.3 per cent, from 17.75 to 24.9 meticais a kilo.The price rise was announced in the early evening of Friday, leading to long queues at Maputo petrol stations, as motorists rushed to fill up their tanks at the old price. This is the first rise in fuel prices since 2011.