3 January 2008
Within hours of violence erupting in Kenya following the country's disputed polls, an unprecedented shortage of fuel and subsequently the rise in fuel prices rocked the country.
By yesterday, the queues at fuel stations had more or less disappeared, not because supplies had been restored but because many motorists had exhausted their reserves running from one station to another where they were told they could get a few drops.
A litre of petrol had shot up to as high as Shs10, 000 especially on the black market. The response by government, promising that the country still has reserves and was working on alternative routes to bring in fuel came too late to prevent speculators from taking advantage of the situation.
The Minister for Energy, Mr Daudi Migereko, has told the nation that alternatives are being worked out.
His comments are coming too late and are likely not to have any impact on mitigating the prices that have already shot through the roof. It is unfortunate that country that knows it has no open access to the sea could allow itself to run without official reserves only relying on a agreement with local oil dealers to reserve some stocks that can sustain the country for a few months in an emergency.
It is exactly this arrangement that initially forced dealers to hold onto their limited stocks, a decision that forced fuel stations to immediately hike prices, start rationing fuel to a level where now, even if the fuel became available, it will be difficult to bring prices down again to the previous rates.
Years ago, the government, crazy at privatisation, offered its reserve tankers in Jinja to be given away to private investors. The same was done to food silos without taking a foresighted look at what the future holds for a landlocked country like ours. Today, hardly ten days into the Kenya violence, the country is already mired in a crisis.
What kind of strategic and proactive planning is this and what does the future hold for Uganda? Already transport has been plunged into the mire and as a consequence commodity prices will automatically follow the high fuel and transport rates.
Fuel being a factor of production, the adverse changes in transport will spark chain reactions in other sectors of the economy and make life quite difficult and probably unbearable. The Kenya incident should be an eye opener for our leaders to understand the value of keeping national fuel reserves.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
