Zimbabwe’s fuel consumption dropped 40% to 150m litres during the 44 days of lockdown due to restrictions by authorities to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
Prior to the lockdown stipulations, Zimbabwe consumed a total of 4m litres daily with petrol figures standing at 1.5m litres and diesel at 2.5m litres. However, with limited movements in and out of cities, the consumption went extremely down with fuel available at almost every service
station.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor John Mangudya told Business Times that the central bank continues to import daily fuel requirements despite the drop in use over the past weeks.
“As the central bank, we have imported the required amount of fuel but the fact that most people are still under lockdown and are restricted to movements; fuel consumption has gone down by 40% in the last month.
As you can notice there are very few queues if not nothing at all as very few businesses are not operating at full throttle, as some staffers are still at lockdown,” Mangudya said.
This week, the Business Times observed that the commodity is now in short supply in some parts of Harare as long winding queues reemerge after government eased the lockdown restrictions nearly a
fortnight ago.
It is estimated that from around 154m litres imported, close to 100m litres were consumed.
