Fuel squeeze cripples (21-12-06)

ormal”>HARARE – The fuel shortage in Zimbabwe has plunged the economy deeper into crisis and heightened political anger against President Robert Mugabe’s government, analysts and the opposition said this week.



The two-week shortage has nearly paralysed the country’s public transport system and forced many struggling companies to scale down operations at a time when they normally cash in on festive season shoppers.


Diesel and paraffin, mainly used by poor urban families for cooking, had run out at many service stations.



Motorists are spending nights in queues at the few service stations with fuel.


News of the deepening fuel crisis coincided with an official release that Zimbabwe’s annual inflation has jumped to a record 1,090 percent, mainly over increases in food prices.


“What is emerging all around us in this country is a picture of extreme managerial incompetence, and the government must be extremely embarrassed by what we are all seeing here,” private economic consultant John Robertson said.
Mugabe’s government remained silent on the crisis despite opposition demands for an explanation. But official sources said the president’s advisers were huddled in closed meetings during the Zanu (PF) conference to try to find a solution to the fuel crisis that has left the public seething with anger.


“People are very angry with everything going on,” Nelson Chamisa, spokesman of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told The Zimbabwean. “Zimbabwe is now a nation where everything is in short supply except violence, misery, disease and death.”


Zimbabwe’s efforts to clinch a fuel-supply deal with an Iranian company had failed after a week of talks with the state-owned National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM), the country’s sole oil procurement agency.


NOCZIM officials have been accused of corruption and sabotage in their handling of the fuel crisis. NOCZIM and ministry of energy officials have not commented.
Fuel supplies have been erratic since 1999 due to a foreign currency squeeze, which has also left the country short of other basic items such as bread, cooking oil and sugar.


Mugabe blamed his problems on domestic and foreign opponents who he says are trying to overthrow him for seizing white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks. Mugabe has also accused foreign oil firms of profiteering at the expense of the state by not importing their own fuel.


“Do the petroleum companies want to co-operate with us, or not?” Mugabe warned during the ruling party’s conference on Saturday.


Zimbabwe is grappling with its worst economic crisis since it gained independence from Britain in 1980, including a severe food shortage that has left nearly a quarter of its 12,5 million people facing starvation.






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