Page 11 - DMEA Week 36

DMEA fUels DMEA
Zimbabwean firm seeks larger share of domestic fuel market
AfriCA
ZIMBABWE’S Petrotrade, a state-owned retail seller of petroleum products, revealed last week that it was gearing up to launch an expansion campaign in rural areas.
Godfrey Ncube, the acting CEO of Petro- trade, said the campaign aimed to bring Petro- trade’s share of the domestic fuel market up from the current level of 10%. e company is looking to gain a much larger market share, and it hopes to do so by boosting rural sales, he said.
“ e future plan is to grow the company. We want to be the company that supplies fuel to dif- ferent parts of the country,” he told e Standard in an interview published on September 8.
“Our aim is that probably in the next three or so years, Petrotrade is there in every district in Zimbabwe. We want to ensure that we are oper- atingineverydistrict,evenintheruralareas.”
To this end, Ncube said, the company is working to build four new lling stations and will soon begin work on a h facility. “We have a project in Mabvuku (harare) that is almost nished, [and] we have got one at Warren Park (harare),” he said.
“We have got a project in Bindura that is about 35% complete, [and] we also have a project in Masvingo that is running at about 30% or so complete. We also have a project that is about to
start at Epworth (harare).”
he acknowledged that Petrotrade was trying
to expand its market share at a time when fuel demand is lower than usual.
demand has shifted because of the steep price hikes that the Zimbabwe Energy Regula- tory Authority (ZERA) has enacted in response to fuel shortages.
ZERA began to push prices upwards in Jan- uary, several months after Zimbabwe started experiencing fuel shortages because its foreign currency reserves were shrinking, and has done so a total of 13 times so far this year.
According to Ncube, the rate hikes have helped to balance supply and demand. “The queues [at lling stations] are shorter, maybe because the prices of fuel have gone up,” he told eStandard.Atthesametime,though,supplies are adequate, he declared.
he also stated that Petrotrade had been nancing its fuel imports with foreign currency obtained on the interbank market and from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ). “We are sourcing foreign currency through the interbank market, although the foreign currency allocation for fuel is a bit lower,” he commented.
“We are also being assisted by the RBZ in sourcing foreign currency, speci cally for fuel.™
Week 36 12•September•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P11