Maravi

Check fuel prices, Yamba urges govt

Check fuel prices, Yamba urges govt
By Fridah Zinyama
Monday April 16, 2007 [04:00]

There is need for government to find an alternative solution to the ever-increasing fuel prices that Zambia is experiencing, Centre for Energy, Environment and Engineering (CEEEZ) director Prof. Francis Yamba has said. Energy experts have been questioning the suitability of the Import Pricing Parity (IPP) system that the Energy Regulation Board (ERB) uses and have since called for other alternatives that would cushion the high fuel prices for the majority of Zambians.

In an interview yesterday, Prof Yamba said the answer to the dilemma that Zambia was experiencing lay in finding alternative fuels that would not be costly to Zambia.

"Government needs to go flat out into bio-fuels as they are much cheaper for Zambia to produce," he said. "Once bio-fuel production is guaranteed by government, it will help to reduce the cost of importing petroleum products by government to about 20 per cent."

Prof Yamba said other non-oil producing countries were doing massive investment into bio-fuel production with good results.

"Take Brazil for example, they are producing a high volume of ethanol that is being blended with both petrol and diesel," Prof Yamba said.

He said the bio-fuel production had considerably reduced the government's expenditure on petroleum products.

"Brazil is one of the largest sugar producing countries in the world and one of the by-products can be used to ethanol production," Prof Yamba said.

He explained that Zambia being a sugar producing country could easily start producing bio-fuels but needed a lot of government commitment for the project to take off.

Last week, ERB executive director Sylvester Hibajene announced an increase in pump prices of petrol by K574 whilst that of diesel had gone up by K391.

Hibajene cited the high prices of petroleum products on the international market that were the highest recorded this year.

"Petrol was costing about US $75.04 per barrel, diesel at US $72.07 per barrel and Kerosene at US $73.64 per barrel," Hibajene said. "It will be recalled that despite the price increases on the international market in February 2007, the petroleum products in March were maintained by way of subsidises due to the availability of funds in the Strategic Reserve Fund."

Labels: BIOFUELS, CEEEZ

posted by MrK @ 4:06 AM