Namibia’s government will temporarily reduce fuel levies by 50% for at least three months until the end of June in \u200ba bid to protect consumers from higher pump prices as \u200cthe United States (US)-Israeli war with Iran continues, the energy minister said this Friday.<\/p>\n
The decision by the southern African country, which is wholly dependent on imports of refined petroleum \u200bproducts, is the latest response by an African country to the \u200bMiddle East crisis that has strangled around 20% of \u2060the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas exports that transit via \u200bthe Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
“This measure is necessitated due to the high price \u200bvolatility of petroleum products, which resulted from the ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East,” Modestus Amutse, Namibia’s Energy Minister, said at a media briefing.<\/p>\n
He said \u200bthe government will make use of its National Energy Fund to \u200bhelp stabilise fuel price volatility from April 1 to the end of June, with \u200cApril’s \u2060under-recovery amounting to some 500 million Namibian Dollars ($29 million).<\/p>\n
At the same briefing he said fuel pump prices for April will increase N$2.50 per litre for petrol and N$4.00 per litre for both diesel grades, \u200bwith the under-recovery \u200bcovered by government.<\/p>\n
“The \u2060objective is to smooth price volatility and ensure stability in domestic fuel prices,” he said.<\/p>\n
Namibia, a global \u200boil and gas exploration hot spot which hopes to \u200bproduce its \u2060first oil by 2030, consumes approximately 100 million litres of petrol and diesel each month.
\nAmutse emphasised that the country’s fuel stocks are adequate \u2060to meet \u200bnational demand for one to two \u200bmonths, and urged citizens not to illegally hoard fuel or engage in panic buying.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14477,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-30142","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Namibia, a global \u200boil and gas exploration hot spot which hopes to \u200bproduce its \u2060first oil by 2030","published_date":"","news_description":"Namibia, a global \u200boil and gas exploration hot spot which hopes to \u200bproduce its \u2060first oil by 2030","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30143,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30142\/revisions\/30143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=30142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}