COMMENT - Oligarchy and globalisation are a problem all over the world, and in few places is it older than South Africa. South Africa and Botswana's diamonds were 90-95% of all the diamonds traded in the world in the 20th century, courtesy of De Beers only. President Zuma of South Africa on oligarchy - MrK
(BLACK OPINION SA) President Jacob Zuma explains white monopoly capital and Western imperialist interference in Africa
By admin Posted in Featured Politics
Posted on November 14, 2017
By BO Staff Writer
South African President, Jacob Zuma sat down with progressive 24 hour news channel, ANN7, to discuss his tenure and views on state matters. In the interview, Zuma said be doesn’t understand why people are still arguing about white monopoly capital, saying that it is a sad reality we cannot ignore. The president also touched on Western imperialism’s longing to maintain political anf economic control in Africa.
On white monopoly capital:
“In so far as white monopoly capital, I think the issue to me is very simple. If
you have a history of South Africa where the majority was deprived of everything – and this is what people don’t like us to say, but it’s a fact, it’s not a manufactured story. We are not mad. We are telling the truth.
This is what, as a freedom fighter, we fought for. We are not saying something we don’t know. They took everything.
The political power, which we now have, and the economic power, the land, everything.
When we say there is a monopoly, let us take the mines.
Companies which dominate in the mines are not many. [Companies] who really are benefiting are very few.
Whether you go to gold, diamonds, platinum, manganese or whatever, you will find the same companies in charge. That means they are dominating. That means
they are monopolizing the economy. They are therefore monopolies. And, they are not black. The companies are not black.
You’ve got companies today that are basically white. They start from the biggest commodities to the broom. Their names are written there. They are monopolizing every space of the economy, it’s a fact. I don’t know why they shouldn’t be called by what they practise. I don’t know why there is a debate in fact, because there is a monopoly capital and in South Africa it is white. In all other countries there are monopolies, it doesn’t have colour as such. But here, because of our history, it does have a colour, it is white.
If you look at the land, stretches of land which was land that belonged to the majority, that was changed. It is now the minority which dominates. And that’s why we are saying these are monopolies. It’s not an insult it’s just explaining the position of the economy. Who is owning bigger, Who is poor.”
On Western imperialist interference:
“Yes, there are some foreign countries who look at some leaders in Africa as their enemy and I’m one of those. It is an accepted thing, or a known thing that if they want to undermine a country, they use the citizens of those countries. In other words, they buy them, they recruit them, they use them to undertake their own. They would also want to choose the people to lead the country who might agree to their policies or people they might actually control. That is a general thing in Africa, it’s not a secret.
Former colonial countries want to influence former colonies in one form or the other, for their own interest. You know for quite a few decades there used to be coup d’état’s in Africa and they were engineered by people from outside. In other words to change governments so that they put people who will support them. I don’t think South Africa will be immune from such a thing. It’s a reality. Leaving aside what I know, or what we know, just as a general kind of practise that has plagued Africa for a long time.
At times, even the issue of elections, how people influence elections in one form or the other, how those people have preference in terms of individuals. That’s what happens. I don’t think you could say South Africa is not affected by that. I think in South Africa what has been a difficulty to many of them is that the ANC has been too strong. It’s an old organisation. In fact some of them have been wishing for the ANC to disappear. But the ANC has been very strong. I think they have been trying every method to weaken the ANC. To create disagreements. To create friction within the ANC. To influence factions etc. There are forces which are always there trying to influence confusion and misleading people so that they can have things in their own way. So that they can be satisfied that they are in control. That one is a reality we cannot ru away from.”
Labels: ANC, APARTHEID, JACOB ZUMA, MONOPOLIES, OLIGARCHIES
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COMMENT - In this hilarious exchange, former
Southafrican Finance Minister Trevor Manuel takes issue with the use of the term
White Monopoly Capital, which he perhaps even correctly ascribes to PR people working on behalf of the Guptas. This is ironic, because right after stepping down as Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel
stepped up to join the Rothschild Group, the real and ultimately only monopolists in South Africa.
The Rothschild barons funded Cecil Rhodes, Randolph Churchill, Disraeli, and their Anglo-American De Beers dominates the mining sector and economy. See posts just below. And yet
even Julius Malema and Andile Mngxitama won't mention their name, and instead use the euphemism 'White Monopoly Capital'. That's how powerful they are. - MrK
(DAILY MAVERICK SA) Fikile, do you remember the tears you shed over the Guptas?
11 June 2017 14:39 (South Africa)
Trevor Manuel
09 Jun 2017 10:24
I have tried, unsuccessfully, to understand the purpose of the article that was first published in your name in the Daily Maverick. You clearly did not understand what I said in the recent panel discussion about Nelson Mandela’s economic legacy.
Dear Fikile,
The drafters of your letter to me try, unsuccessfully, to weave a story that drifts from Andre Odendaal, Moeletsi Mbeki, Anton Lembede and Martin Luther King, to lies about our household income. The only result is absolute confusion.
I stand by what I said at the Nelson Mandela Foundation: the term "White Monopoly Capital" was conjured up by Bell Pottinger on behalf of the Guptas, and filtered into the political discourse to serve their agenda. Since then I have become aware of the specificity of the facts. As Ranjeni Munusamy reminds us, the term was developed by Bell Pottinger's Victoria Geoghegan, who in an email to Duduzane Zuma styled "White Monopoly Capital" as a narrative and filtered it into the discourse via Collen Maine, Andile Mngxitama and Mzwanele Manyi.
The idea of 'White Monopoly Capital' (WMC) is a ruse to draw attention away from our pressing policy priorities. It is for this reason that I asked what the alternative is:
ADVERTISING
inRead invented by Teads
"Is it Indian Monopoly Capture out of Saxonwold?”
In case you haven’t understood my initial statement, this is a specific reference to the wheeling and dealing of the Guptas. It goes without saying that the scandalous conduct of this particular family must be separated from the significant contributions to the liberation struggle of many thousands of people of Indian origin.
To recast for your benefit, WMC is an instrument of propaganda that draws attention to one issue in a manner that ignores the realities confronting us. I must assume from your implacable belief in its existence that you have consumed the idea - hook, line and sinker.
I agree with the views of the SACP, as expressed in their recent statement following the Central Committee meeting of 2-4 June, that one of the “features of the Gupta parasitic-patronage network” is “a diversionary populist ideological platform”. Amongst other insightful points the SACP makes, which you would do well to read carefully, it says:
“In the face of growing public exposure of their misdeeds, there have been a number of ideological interventions from the parasitic-patronage faction."
If you also took the trouble to read the Economics Resolutions of each ANC Conference since the 49th in 1994, you will not find the language of 'White Monopoly Capital' in any of them. This is because WMC is not part of the lexicon of terms used in ANC policy. It was conjured up as a red herring to obscure the misdeeds of the Guptas and those who benefit from their patronage network.
Words are important, and in the political economy terms such as monopoly have a distinct meaning. The tasks at hand remain enormous. I would welcome a rational policy discussion with you but that depends on your getting facts right. To use terms such as “neoliberal sleeper” to describe me obfuscates the real issues. Extensive research, including by international economists, has established that South Africa has the most redistributive income tax system in the world, and that its social expenditure is largely progressive. But our ongoing challenge is of course economic growth to sustain this, the creation of jobs to improve the standards of living for our people, and the dramatic reduction of inequality by improving public education, and changing the apartheid landscape of our cities.
The National Development Plan placed its central focus on how to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality. These remain cornerstone challenges. They will not disappear simply because some new nefarious slogan has been dreamt up by Bell Pottinger and the Guptas. Our problem is that too many people are left behind, excluded from access to good quality education, better quality public service and an investment in skills. Of course, 23 years on, the exclusion of so many still bears all of the dimensions of race, class, gender and geography. These challenges are not wished away; we need action, measurement and communication with all South Africans.
You would recall that the ANC’s 53rd national conference in 2012 adopted the National Development Plan as a policy of the governing party. The NDP also makes a series of recommendations about policing to deal with the realities of poverty, and I would advise you to scrupulously examine these. Unfortunately, it is as though the NDP has been abandoned as people who occupy senior positions of State appear more focused on demonstrating that it is their turn to eat.
It is odd, Fikile, that a mere five years ago you described President Zuma as a “politically bankrupt” leader who married “every week”. Odd, because I have a clear memory of an incident that may be at the heart of why you have responded to me in the manner you have. That memory goes back to an ANC NEC meeting in August 2011. There, the Fikile Mbalula we once knew wept as he spoke. He explained he'd been called to Saxonwold by the Guptas in May 2009 and was told that he was being promoted from the position of Deputy Minister of Police to Minister of Sport. A few days later the President confirmed this change. The weeping was about the fact that he, Fikile, was happy that he'd made it into Cabinet but that it was wrong to have learnt this from Atul Gupta. That weeping was then, and this is now. Perhaps there are still a few debts to be called in by Saxonwold.
On the questions of service to our country and people, I will leave history to judge my contribution.
Regards,
Trevor DM
Labels: ANC, FIKILE MBALULA, MONOPOLIES, NEOCOLONIALISM, NEOLIBERALISM, ROTHSCHILD GROUP, TREVOR MANUEL, WHITE MONOPOLY CAPITAL
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‘Let’s do away with financial imperialism
Sunday, 17 February 2013 00:00
Wholesalers and retailers in the beverages sector seem to have a lot of reservations about the way big manufacturers and suppliers are treating them. So bad has been the situation that an association representing the interests of the sector is considering approaching the Competition and Tariff Commission to look at some alleged unfair business practices that are believed to be threatening the businesses of many in the sector.
In order to get further insight into what exactly is happening, The Sunday Mail Business Editor DARLINGTON MUSARURWA (DM) last week spoke to the president of the Beverage Wholesalers and Retailers’ Association of Zimbabwe, Mr Petros Kanjera (PK)
DM: As a point of departure, we just want to understand what kind of animal is the Beverage and Retailers’ Association of Zimbabwe and what informed its formation?
PK: Beverage Wholesalers and Retailers’ Association of Zimbabwe has been formed by wholesalers and retailers in the beverage industry and our main supplier here is Delta Beverages. This (association) has also been prompted by the actions of Delta who revised the discounts that we used to enjoy from 5 percent to 2,6 percent.
There was also a “voiceless” situation where sector members used to complain about ill treatment or being shortchanged by some of these big companies. Our analysis as an association is that no one in this business has amounted to anything. Why? Because for any business person to remain in business, they should be an economic person.
Every person in business spends money to get money through a profit, which is only possible through a return on investment. So we believe that some of these big manufacturers have been abusing the market, in the sense that every time the margins of the wholesalers and retailers are going down.
By virtue of that now we have a situation whereby people are being made poorer and poorer and poorer.
For example, retailers used to make a gross profit of US$10 per crate, which has, however, since been reduced to $3,85 per crate. So, where is the difference going and who is pocketing it?
At the moment, there are some sector members who do not know that they have the right to sell beverages at a price they feel is economic to them because of the monopoly and power exercised by some of these big manufacturers.
As a result, some of the wholesalers and retailers are closing.
We have since realised that we will hardly go anywhere if our voices are not heard.
DM: So, when was this organisation formed?
PK: In July last year.
DM: And your membership?
PK: Well, we have a membership around the country; we are currently busy forming provincial structures. I think we have one or two provinces where we are not represented.
DM: What do you hope to achieve as an association?
PK: We want to create an environment where we have a level playing field for people in the beverages industry. That is what we feel we should achieve. We really need co-operative understanding from manufacturers.
Currently we have a problem in that even if retailers can determine prices of their products, there are some big manufacturers that believe they have the power to determine what to give and to whom. And they determine what type of brand they should produce and they also determine what it is they want done.
What we are saying as an association is that while we are talking about indigenisation, there are some companies whose policies seem to be parallel to indigenisation, because the ordinary retailer is seeing his working capital decline everyday.
If the working capital is reduced, it means that someone can hardly stay in business.
We have seen a situation where some of these manufacturers come to dictate the price at which you should sell your beverages. They ignore other things like costs that are incurred in retailing that product.
So, in such circumstances, how can someone stay in business?
One can only stay in business when he is making money.
We want to achieve a situation where these powerful manufacturers do not manage other people’s businesses.
DM: It seems that this is your main grievance?
PK: Yes, we are saying they (manufacturers) are managing our businesses from their bedrooms. They even go to the extent of supplying retailers with their own refrigerators because they know full well that they cannot afford them. Why then do they continue to squeeze our margins?
In any case, how does someone get to dictate what you have to sell and at what price in someone’s shop?
It is fair to say that in this case we don’t have the assets; we only have the liabilities.
DM: In your opinion, do you think you will be successful in lobbying against such monopolies in the market?
PK: Yes! Why not? We are talking of a situation where we are saying people should be empowered and not disempowered. We believe we will have Government’s support to get that done. These big manufacturers will always argue that anyone is free to enter into the market as a competitor, but, believe me, they don’t mean it.
Unfair business practices cannot be of any benefit for those in business, but some people take advantage of their muscle in the market. So, they usually dictate what the market should want.
In essence, the formation of this association was to enhance business processes — so that we have a clear connection between the association and the producers or manufacturers or any other people involved in the distribution chain.
At the end of the day, the person who suffers is the consumer.
DM: Are you saying that your main grievance is to have the freedom to determine your own prices?
PK: No! It’s (the freedom) there already, but some wholesalers are retailers don’t know that. What disturbs us the most is that some of these big manufacturers are five-in-one: they are manufacturers, they are suppliers, they are wholesalers, they are retailers and they are distributors. Where should other people fit in then?
We want them to remain in their core business of manufacturing beverages and give a chance to other businesses or investors who might want to venture into such kind of business.
DM: But if you are given the freedom, or if you have the freedom to adjust the prices as you want ostensibly because of your cost structures, will that not make the consumer the ultimate victim?
PK: What difficulties are you talking about? Let me tell you something: when you are structuring a fair price you first consider your internal cost structure. What we are saying is that whenever manufacturers intend to increase their prices, they must first sit down with us as an association and discuss the pricing model.
The association is a platform to create a situation whereby we communicate with the manufacturers.
We are all in business; we want each other. This is not a confrontational situation we are creating here. We want to create a situation where we have good relationship between ourselves and the manufacturers, including everyone else in the business.
In fact, we also envisage a situation where our association will have shares in those companies. We want to do away with financial imperialism, which is a situation where some people just invest in this country to take money from us. They are not even interested in how we live.
DM: What role do you envisage will be played by the Beverages Wholesalers and Retailers’ Association of Zimbabwe in five years’ time?
PK: Well, our future plans are very clear. We are saying if all goes well we will be in a position to lobby our grievance through the Competition and Tariff Competition. We are saying if our problems are going to be attended to; if our playing field is ever going to be level, we will see our people begin to believe that they are really in business. Currently, people are closing down.
Our members should be empowered.
As long as there is no mutual relationship between the manufacturer and our members, there is no way we can grow.
DM: What makes you hopeful that you will achieve all these goals that you have set out for the association?
PK: We will only achieve if we have support from our members, which is there already.
DM: Have you tried to engage these big manufacturers or lobby through the Government?
PK: At the moment, we are still trying to line up several meetings with the authorities, but, yes, we have done that. Last year, we had a meeting on the 27th of January with one of the manufacturers. Again, on May 14 2012 we engaged some of the directors, and on September 27, we had a meeting with the chief executive officer of Delta Beverages, Mr Pearson Gowero. We didn’t want to jump the gun.
Labels: BEER, MONOPOLIES
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Goldman, JP Morgan Have Now Become A Commodity Cartel As They Slowly Recreate De Beers' Diamond Monopoly
Tyler Durden's picture
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/16/2011 23:57 -0400
About a month ago we reported on
an inquiry launched into JPM's "anti-competitive" and "monopolistic" practices on the LME which have
resulted in artificially high prices for a series of commodities which had been hoarded by the Too Big To Fail bank. Today, the WSJ continues this investigation into a practice that is not insular to JPM but also includes Goldman Sachs and
"other owners of large metals warehouses" which can simplistically be characterized as
a De Beers-like attempt to artificially keep prices high for commodities such as
aluminum, courtesy of
warehousing massive excess supply, artificially low market distribution of the final product, while collecting exorbitant rents in the process. Specifically, "Goldman, through its Metro International Trade Services unit, owns the biggest warehouse complex in the LME system, a series of
19 buildings in Detroit that house about
a quarter of the aluminum stored in LME facilities.
It is not only Goldman's Metro operations, but includes JP Morgan's Henry Bath division, and naturally commodities behemoth Glencore, all of which are taking advantage of the LME's guidelines and rules which make the imposition of a pseudo-monopoly an easy task. The primary driver of this anti-competitive behavior is the fact that GS, JPM and Glencore now control virtually the entire inventory bottlenecking pathways:
"In recent years, major investment banks like Goldman and J.P. Morgan and commodities houses like Glencore have been snapping up warehouses around the world, turning the industry from a disperse grouping of independent operators into another arm of Wall Street.
The LME has licensed about 600 warehouses around the world. The transformation has raised questions about whether the investment banks, which also have big commodity-trading arms, are able to use their position as owners of warehouses to manipulate prices to their advantage."
And since the outcome of this anti-competitive delayed tolling collusion ends up having quite an inflationary impact on end prices, the respective administrations are more than happy to turn a blind eye to this market dominant behavior which buffers the impact of deflation on input costs. We may have seen the end of the OPEC cartel. Alas, it has been replaced with a far more vicious one - this one having Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as its two key members.
WSJ explains further:
The
warehousing issue alarmed one trader enough to seek government
intervention. Anthony Lipmann, managing director of metals trader
Lipmann Walton & Co. Ltd., gave evidence to the U.K. House of
Commons Select Committee in May 2011, raising concern about large banks
and trading houses owning facilities that store other people's metal.
The
U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading dismissed concerns that ownership of
warehouses gives certain market players an unfair advantage, saying on
Tuesday that there were no "obvious competition issues that would merit
further investigation at this stage."
Goldman's Detroit warehouse holds about 1.15 million tons out of a total 4.62 million tons in LME-approved warehouses.
Since Goldman bought Metro early last year, the wait time for aluminum delivery in Detroit has increased to about seven months.
Metro
charges its customers 42 cents a day for storing one metric ton of
aluminum in Detroit, which is about the industry average. At 900,000
tons in the warehouses, Goldman is earning $378,000 a day on rental
costs, or about $79 million in seven months.
"Warehouses are
making a lot more money," said Jorge Vazquez, managing director of
aluminum at Harbor Commodity Research. Goldman is "really the winner
clearly, because if you want to take metal away from the location, you
have to wait up to 10 months to get your metal out, and in the meantime
you're paying rent."
While the obvious purpose of "warehousing" is nothing short of artificially bottlenecking primary supply, these same warehouses have no problem with acquiring all the product created by primary producers in real time, and not releasing it into general circulation: once again, a tactic used by De Beers for decades to keep the price of diamonds artificially high. But unlike De Beers, Goldman also gets to charge rental fees once demand delivery instructions are sent out. The rent ends up being substantial due to the firm's unwillingness to release handily available product to the market in due course:
Metro, meantime, is taking in metal.
Metro also offers cash incentives to producers like Rio Tinto Alcan to
store their metal in Metro's sheds for contracted periods, sometimes as
much as $150 a ton, according to traders.
Once the metal is in
the warehouse, the producers sell ownership to this metal on the open
market. The new owner can't collect his metal for seven months because
of the bottleneck. For that period, the new owner is stuck paying rent
to Metro.
"The system is set up like a funnel, so you can dump
large amounts of metal in the front end and only get a little out at the
back end," said David Wilson, director of metals research at Société
Générale SA. "It enables a situation where the rules of the warehousing
system are taken advantage of."
Another beneficiary of this monopoly behavior of course are the actual metal producers, which benefit from this illegal and conflicted "middleman" intervention:
Aside
from warehouses, producers of the metal are benefiting, because they
are able to charge more for their metal. Klaus Kleinfeld, chief
executive of Alcoa Inc., said in an interview that supply-and-demand
factors are leading prices higher.
Yet it is not even Goldman or JPM's fault: after all they are merely following the guidelines set up by the LME:
"You can't blame the warehouses," Mr. Kleinfeld said.
U.S.
aluminum sheet maker Novelis sent a letter to the LME in May
"expressing concerns" about the warehousing situation, a company
spokesman said.
The complaints led the LME to commission an
independent study into the issue last July. That study recommended a
sliding scale be adopted, rather than the fixed minimum of 1,500 tons a
day. That would result in larger warehouse complexes being required to
release more metal.
It effectively doubles the minimum amount
required to be relinquished by Metro each day. The ruling would go into
effect in April. The LME board on Thursday, however, failed to reach a
consensus on the recommendations.
While warehousing used to be a last resort market at inception, it has now become, courtesy of the economies of scale of the middlemen, the "go-to" market, which makes any normal market clearing impossible.
Because should true market clearing be allowed, the prices for everything from aluminum to copper would plunge immediately:
The
situation is made more aggravating for metal consumers because supply
has far outweighed demand for most of the last decade, and there is more
than 4.5 million metric tons of surplus metal stored in LME's warehouse
system.
Alas as pointed out previously, with the
exchanges ultimately merely conforming to the bidding of their host
ponzi scheme governments, which will happily allow even further
consolidation of warehousing facilities by the trio in order to
artificially boost inflation ever higher, the final product is a vicious
loop in which everyone benefits...Everyone but the end consumer of
course, who is faced with an anti-competitive system controlled by a
handful of Fed-funded players.
And with China unlikely to open up
sales of its own warehouses (especially since Chinese vendors are now
well-known to use physical copper in storage to write letters of credit
against for speculative purposes) to the market, the system will
persevere until such time as global inflationary powers are finally
destroyed and there is a scramble to dump inventories. Like what
happened in the fall of 2008. At that point just as the status quo
drives prices higher, so the unwind will result in a massive undershoot
of prices from fair values. Which in turn will allow those insatiable
importers of commoditized product such as China to feel like your
typical mortgage-free living American at a K-mart blue light special.
But of course we don't have to worry about that, because the central
planners will never allow the system to implode like it did in 2008.
After all that would defeat the whole purpose of central planning...
In the meantime, good luck to anyone who wishes to break the cartel's monopoly in the aluminum, copper or any other commodity.
Labels: COMMODITIES, DEBEERS, GOLDMAN SACHS, LONDON METAL EXCHANGE, MONOPOLIES
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COMMENT - On the consolidation of ownership into the four families - Rothschild ($21 trillion), Rockefeller, Oppenheimer, Nobel, Mellon, and various royal families around the globe, including the Dutch and British royal families. So who owns the Federal Reserve, IMF and World Bank again? Time for an audit.
The Four Horsemen Behind America's Oil Wars
by Dean Henderson
Global Research, April 26, 2011
While Americans are robbed at the gas pump, Exxon Mobil will this week report a 60% increase in its quarterly net profits to a cool $10 billion. Royal Dutch/Shell will report a 30% increase.
In 1975 British writer Anthony Sampson penned The Seven Sisters, bestowing a collective name on a shadowy oil cartel, which throughout its history has sought to eliminate competitors and control the world’s oil resource. Sampson’s “Seven Sisters” name came from independent Italian oil man Enrico Mattei.
In the 1960’s Mattei began negotiating with Algeria, Libya and other nationalistic OPEC states who wanted to sell their oil internationally without having to deal with the Seven Sisters. Algeria had a long history of defying Big Oil and was once ruled by President Houari Boumedienne, one of the great Arab socialist leaders of all time, who initiated the original ideas for a more just “New International Economic Order” in fiery speeches at the UN, where he encouraged producer cartels modeled on OPEC as a means to Third World emancipation.
In 1962 Mattei died in a mysterious plane crash. Former French intelligence agent Thyraud de Vosjoli says French intelligence was involved. William McHale of Time magazine, who covered Mattei’s attempt to break the Big Oil cartel, also died under strange circumstances.
A tidal wave of mergers at the turn of the millennium transformed Sampson’s Seven Sisters – Royal Dutch/Shell, British Petroleum, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco and Gulf – into a more tightly controlled cartel which, in my book Big Oil & Their Bankers…, I term the Four Horsemen: Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco and Royal Dutch/Shell.
By the late 1800’s John D. Rockefeller had become popularly known as “the Illumination Merchant” during a time when oil was powering the reading lamps of every American household. Rockefeller figured out that it was the refining of oil into various end products and not actual crude production which held the key to control of the industry.
By 1895 his Standard Oil Company owned 95% of all refineries in the US while expanding operations overseas. Summing up his attitude towards his new oil monopoly, Rockefeller once stated, “The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism is gone never to return”.
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust began illuminating the New World with funding from Kuhn Loeb and Rothschild banking families. While the Rockefellers worked the American side of the energy matrix, the Rothschilds consolidated their control over Old World oil resources.
By 1892 Shell Oil, under the direction of Marcus Samuel, began shipping South Sea crude through the new Suez Canal to supply Europe’s factories. Shell took its name from the abundance of seashells which lined the shores of the Dutch-controlled archipelago that is now Indonesia. The Samuel family controls London’s biggest merchant bank Hill Samuel, along with the trading house Samuel Montagu.
In 1903 the Swedish Nobel and the French Rothschild’s Far East Trading – financed by King Wilhelm III – combined with Samuel and Oppenheimer’s Shell Oil to form the Asiatic Petroleum Company.
In 1927 Royal Dutch Petroleum discovered oil at Seria off the coast of Brunei, whose Sultan would become the world’s richest man as a result of his loyalty to Royal Dutch. The Dutch and British monarchs who control Royal Dutch merged their company with the Oppenheimer and Samuel’s Shell Oil and Nobel and Rothschild’s Far East Trading and Royal Dutch/Shell was born. Queen Beatrix of the Dutch House of Orange and Lord Victor Rothschild are its two largest shareholders.
In 1872 Baron Julius du Reuter was granted his 50-year concession in Iran. In 1914 the British government took control of his Anglo-Persian Company and renamed it Anglo-Iranian, then British Petroleum, then BP. Britain’s House of Windsor controls a large stake in BP Amoco while the Kuwaiti monarchy owns 9.5%.
In 1906 the US government ordered the dissolution of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust, charging that Standard violated the new Sherman Anti-Trust Act. On May 15, 1911 the US Supreme Court declared, “Seven men and a corporate machine have conspired against their fellow citizens. For the safety of the Republic we now decree that this dangerous conspiracy must be ended by November 15th”.
But the breakup of Standard Oil along state lines only served to increase the wealth of the Rockefeller family, who retained 25% interest in each new company. Soon the new companies began to reintegrate.
The new Standard Oil of New York merged with Vacuum Oil to form Socony-Vacuum, which became Mobil in 1966. Standard Oil of Indiana joined with Standard Oil of Nebraska and Standard Oil of Kansas and in 1985 became Amoco. In 1972 Standard Oil of New Jersey became Exxon. In 1984 Standard Oil of California joined with Standard Oil Kentucky to become Chevron. Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio) retained the Standard brand until it was bought by BP, which also bought trust-baby Atlantic Richfield (ARCO). Thus the Rockefellers came to own a large chunk of BP.
By 1920 Exxon, BP and Royal Dutch/Shell dominated the world’s booming oil business, with the Rockefeller, Rothschild, Samuel, Nobel and Oppenheimer families, along with British and Dutch royals owning the brunt of their stock. Two other Rockefeller babies, Mobil and Chevron, weren’t far behind the Big Three. The Texas Murchison family – themselves patronized by the Rockefellers – controlled Texaco, while the Mellon family – with its own ties to the Rockefeller fortune – controlled Seventh Sister Gulf Oil.
The first known attempt by the Seven Sisters to stifle competition came in 1928 when Sir John Cadman of British Petroleum, Sir Henry Deterding of Royal Dutch/Shell, Walter Teagle of Exxon and William Mellon of Gulf met at Cadman’s castle near Achnacarry, Scotland. Here an agreement was reached that would divide up the world’s oil reserves and markets.
The Achnacarry Agreement became known to oil industry insiders as the As Is Agreement because its aim was to maintain a status quo under which the Seven Sisters controlled the world’s oil through market share agreements, sharing of refining and storage facilities, and by agreeing to limit production to keep prices high.
Big Oil signed three more agreements in the next six years. The 1930 Memorandum of Understanding for European Markets was followed by the 1932 Heads of Agreement for Distribution and the 1934 Draft Memorandum of Principles.
Between 1931 and 1933 the Four Horsemen ruthlessly cut the price for East Texas crude from $.98/barrel to $.10/barrel. Many Texas wildcatters were run out of business. Those that remained were forced to agree to strict production quotas under threat of ruin by the majors – quotas that still exist to this day. It is these quotas, not “the environmentalists” (as the reactionary right claims) that serve to keep the US dependent on Persian Gulf oil, where Big Oil dominates the game.
By taking the oil industry international – which requires billions in capital – the Four Horsemen keep independent challenges to their hegemony at bay. They also put thousands of US oil workers out of jobs in Texas and Louisiana.
John D. Rockefeller himself did not control crude reserves. Instead he invested heavily in refining and cut deals with the Morgan-controlled railroads to cut his shipping costs. Texas wildcatters had to pay much more to ship their oil. They possessed neither the esoteric knowledge of refining crude, nor the capital to build expensive refineries. All their money was tied up in drilling rigs, which were not cheap either.
Today the Rockefeller family fortune is even more heavily invested in downstream oil operations such as petrochemicals and plastics, as well as in industries that are dependent on oil such as banking, aerospace and automobiles.
In the 1980’s long-time Chase Manhattan chairman David Rockefeller invested $35 billion in Singapore, which has since become an important refining and storage center. Royal Dutch/Shell’s largest single refinery is at Pulau Bukom, Singapore. In 1991, as the Asian Tigers began to roar, Exxon Mobil introduced unleaded gas to Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore. It produces it at its giant Jurong refinery in Singapore.
The Four Horsemen have followed the money downstream. They are the world’s largest refiners and marketers of crude oil in all of its various end-product forms. RoyalDutch/Shell is both the leading marketer and refiner of crude oil and is currently the source of one in ten barrels of refined product in the world. Its bottom line has benefited greatly from this downstream move with the firm showing record profits starting in 1988 and many years since. Seventy-seven percent of Shell profits now come from petrochemicals.
Shell also owns the world’s largest refinery complex on the Netherlands Antilles island of Aruba, just off the Venezuelan coast. In 1991 Shell sold an outdated refinery on the neighboring island of Curacao while upgrading its Aruba facilities. The completion of this massive complex caused Venezuelan crude to become much more important to global oil supply. Crude from African nations like Nigeria and Angola is also refined at the Shell Aruba facility, which sits next to a hulking Exxon Mobil refinery named Lago, after Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo, from where most Venezuelan crude is derived.
Royal Dutch/Shell is currently focused on development of natural gas markets, investing heavily in Middle Distillate Synthesis (MDS) plants that convert liquefied natural gas to high-grade liquid products. By 1996 they had built MDS facilities in Malaysia, Nigeria and Norway. In 1993 Shell joined with Mitsubishi and Exxon Mobil in a $3 billion natural gas project in Venezuela and launched a $1.1 billion petrochemical expansion in Brazil. That same year BP Amoco discovered huge oilfields in neighboring Columbia.
By 1969 Exxon owned 67 oil refineries in 37 countries. Over 60% of Exxon’s 1991 profits came from downstream operations. In the first quarter of that year alone, Exxon made a $2.4 billion profit, the highest quarterly profit since Rockefeller founded Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1882. It was no coincidence that the Gulf War was being prosecuted during this time, with Exxon meeting much of the demand generated by the US military and its allies.
In the early 1990’s Exxon bought the plastics division of Allied Signal and entered joint ventures with both Dow and Monsanto in the thermoplastic elastomer realm. According to Exxon Mobil’s 2001 10K filing to the SEC, the company netted $17 billion in year 2000. From 2003-2006, during the US occupation of Iraq, the company regularly broke its own record for biggest quarterly profit by any corporation in US history.
Recently the Four Horsemen have been swimming back upstream, becoming the top four retailers of gas in the US. They own every major pipeline in the world and the vast majority of oil tankers. Royal Dutch/Shell has 114 ships in its armada. Recently the company added seven giant liquefied natural gas tankers. Shell has 133,000 employees worldwide and in 1991, boasted assets of $105 billion. Shell’s Bullwinkle oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico is taller than the world’s highest building.
Exxon Mobil leads the way in producing lubricant base stocks and its scientists invented butyl rubber. It has operations in 200 countries and is the only firm that operates in the harsh Beaufort Sea, where it built 19 islands of steel to drill from. Exxon owns most of the land in Yemen (5.6 million acres), Oman and Chad. Its 1991 assets totaled $87 billion.
The latest wave of mergers in the oil industry began in the early 1960’s. Eight of the top twenty-five oil companies in 1960 had merged by 1970. Exxon bought Monterey Oil and Honolulu Oil. Chevron scooped up Standard Oil of Kentucky. Atlantic Oil merged with Richfield Refining to form ARCO, which then gobbled up Sinclair. Marathon Oil bought Plymouth Refining.
Another merger wave ensued in the 1980’s. Chevron bought Gulf in 1984. Texaco purchased Getty Oil. Mobil bought Superior Oil. BP grabbed both Britoil and Sohio (Standard Oil of Ohio). ARCO bought City Services. US Steel purchased Marathon Oil. The 1984 discovery of North Sea oil consolidated the position of Big Oil – especially Royal Dutch/Shell and Exxon – whose Shell Expro joint venture was awarded the prime concessions.
In 1985 Shell bought Occidental Petroleum’s Columbian interests. In 1988 it took over Tenneco’s assets in that country. The 1990’s saw Amoco (Standard Oil of IN) hitching its wagons to BP to form BP Amoco. In 1999 BP Amoco bought ARCO, giving the company 72% ownership of the Alaskan Pipeline.
Exxon bought Texaco Canada and Mexico’s Compania General de Lubricantes in 1991. Conoco was purchased by DuPont. In March 1997, Texaco and RD/Shell merged their US refining operations.
The final and most dramatic wave of consolidation saw Exxon merge with Mobil in November 1999. That same year Chevron bought Thailand’s Rutherford-Moran Oil and Argentina’s Petrolera Argentina San Jorge. In July 2000 Chevron merged its petrochemical business with that of Phillips to form Chevron Phillips Chemical Company. That same year Chevron tied the knot with Texaco.
On August 30, 2002 Conoco’s merger with Phillips Petroleum was approved creating Conoco Phillips, which in 2005 bought coal titan Burlington Resources. In 2002 Royal Dutch/Shell bought up previously merged Pennzoil/Quaker State as well as Britain’s biggest remaining independent oil company – Enterprise Oil. In 2005 Chevron Texaco bought Unocal. And Four Horsemen rode on.
The Four Horsemen have interlocking directorates with the international mega-banks. Exxon Mobil shares board members with JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and Prudential. Chevron Texaco has interlocks with Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. BP Amoco shares directors with JP Morgan Chase. RD/Shell has ties with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, N. M. Rothschild & Sons and Bank of England.
Former Citibank chairman Walter Shipley sat on Exxon Mobil’s board, as did Wayne Calloway of Citigroup and Allen Murray of JP Morgan Chase. Willard Butcher of Chase sat on the board of Chevron Texaco. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan came from Morgan Guaranty Trust and served on the board of Mobil. BP Amoco director Lewis Preston went on to become president of the World Bank.
Other BP Amoco directors have included Sir Eric Drake, the #2 man at the world’s largest port operator P&O Nedlloyd and a director at Hudson Bay Company and Kleinwort Benson. William Johnston Keswick, whose family controls Hong Kong powerhouse Jardine Matheson, also sat on the board of BP Amoco. Keswick’s son is a director at HSBC. The Hong Kong connection is even stronger at RD/Shell.
Lord Armstrong of Ilminster sat on the boards of RD/Shell, N. M. Rothschild & Sons, Rio Tinto and Inchcape. Cathay Pacific Airlines owner and HSBC insider Sir John Swire was a director at Shell, as was Sir Peter Orr, who joins Armstrong on Inchape’s board. Shell director Sir Peter Baxendell joins Armstrong on the board of Rio Tinto, while Shell’s Sir Robert Clark sits on the board of the Bank of England.
As a result of the deregulation craze in the US companies no longer have to report their top shareholders to the SEC. According to 1993 10K reports filed by the Four Horsemen, the Rothschild, Rockefeller and Warburg banking combines still control Big Oil. The Rockefellers exert control through New York mega-banks and Banker’s Trust, which in 1999 was purchased by Warburg-controlled Deutsche Bank in its bid to become the largest bank in the world.
As of 1993 Banker’s Trust was #1 shareholder in Exxon. Chemical Bank was #4 and J.P. Morgan was #5. Both are now part of JP Morgan Chase. Banker’s Trust was also leading shareholder at Mobil. BP listed Morgan Guaranty as its biggest owner in 1993, while Amoco listed Banker’s Trust as its #2 shareholder. Chevron listed Banker’s Trust as its #5 shareholder, while Texaco listed J.P. Morgan as its #4 owner and Banker’s Trust as #9.
Thus, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase – the banks of Warburg and Rockefeller – have increased shares in Exxon Mobil, BP Amoco and Chevron Texaco. Rothschild-controlled Bank of America and Wells Fargo exert West Coast control over Big Oil, while Mellon Bank also remains a big player. Wells Fargo and Mellon Bank were both top 10 shareholders of Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco and BP Amoco as of 1993.
Information on RD/Shell is harder to obtain since they are registered in the UK and Holland and are not required to file 10K reports. It is 60% owned by Royal Dutch Petroleum of Holland and 40% owned by Shell Trading & Transport of the UK. The company has only 14,000 stockholders and few directors. The consensus from researchers is that Royal Dutch/Shell is still controlled by the Rothschild, Oppenheimer, Nobel and Samuel families along with the British House of Windsor and the Dutch House of Orange.
Queen Beatrix of the Dutch House of Orange and Lord Victor Rothschild are the two largest shareholders of RD/Shell. Queen Beatix’ mother Juliana was once the richest woman in the world and a patroness of the right-wing occult movement. Prince Bernhard, who married Juliana in 1937, was a member of the Hitler Youth Movement, the Nazi SS and an employee of Nazi combine I. G. Farben. He sits on the boards of over 300 European companies and founded the Bilderbergers.
When you’re being robbed, it’s always a good idea to be able to identify the perp. Now if only we could get the cops to bring em’ in…
Dean Henderson is the author of Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network and The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries. His Left Hook blog is at www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com
Labels: MONOPOLIES, NEOCOLONIALISM, NEOLIBERALISM, OIL
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Act fast on this emerging monopoly
EDITOR — There is a very worrying trend in the Information Communication Technologies sector, which requires urgent Government intervention.
If the issue is not urgently addressed, Zimbabwe would soon have a Bill Gates kind of scenario because at one point Microsoft software packages were found on almost every computer in the world, until the anti-monopolies trust in the European Union, in particular, ended up taking Bill Gates to court where he was heavily fined.
They also argued that Gates’ monopoly was stifling innovation, growth and competition in the ICT industry.
The question we should ask ourselves is, although Bill Gates is a savvy businessman, why did the EU take such a decisive action, which on face value seems as though it was an infringement on his rights?
When one mobile phone provider in the country now has more than two million people on its subscriber base, then we should start wondering whether the provider is not already monopolising the ICT industry.
Since it is still expanding, aren’t we going to have a situation where one company ends up controlling the whole industry, which translates into having a monopoly on what people say, to whom, and what they view and listen to, when and how?
With the convergence of ICTs where we are seeing the integration of technologies such as the Internet, television, radio and newspapers, what is the result of such a monopoly?
Simply put, Government should closely monitor the situation.
Cyberpunk Librarian.
Harare.
Labels: ICT, MONOPOLIES
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Competition law and state-owned firms
Written by Andrew Kashita
Thursday, May 28, 2009 2:56:18 PM
I refer to the story of May 19, 2009 in which the executive director of the Zambia Competition Commission (ZCC) is reported to have announced the proposals to lift the exemption of state-owned companies from the application of the competition and fair trade act, 1994.
I was saddened and disappointed to see this claim, 15 years after this law was put on the statute book. There is nowhere in the Act where the exemption is conferred on state-owned companies.
The preamble itself states: "to encourage competition in the economy by prohibiting anti-competitive trade practices; to regulate monopolies and concentration of economic power; to protect consumer welfare; to strengthen the efficiency of production and distribution of goods and services.
The definition of a monopoly is " a dominant undertaking ...which produces, supplies, distributes or otherwise controls not less than half of the total goods of any description that are produced, supplied or distributed throughout Zambia or any substantial part of Zambia...". The same goes for services.
The quoted section 3(f): "...activities expressly approved or required under a treaty or agreement to which the Republic of Zambia is a party" has been misconstrued by the ZCC.
By common understanding, a ‘treaty’ or ‘agreement’ to which the government is a party means treaties or bilateral agreements with other countries or protocols and those signed with such bodies as the United Nations, African Union or SADC. These are the bodies in which other countries are signatories, and they rarely deal with trading organisations.
The Act deals with trading organisations in which the government has joint investments with other countries being trading entities which have provisions for dealing with revisions of operating (i.e. trading) charges and there are not many of these. The examples are TAZARA and charges at bridges such as Sesheke crossing into Namibia; at Kazungula when the bridge is built but not the present pontoons to and from Botswana. TAZARA also faces competition on the road throughout its length.
There are no treaties or agreements with other countries in respect of Zesco, Zamtel, Zambia Railways or even Cell Z which are all trading companies.
These companies and other activities are not exempted from the Competition Law.
The report went on to say that ZCC can only recommend to the minister in respect of state-owned companies flouting the law. This is incorrect.
Under the minister incorporation Act, in this capacity, the minister holds shares, bonds or other instruments on behalf of the government but he also as a shareholder, has powers to sue and be sued. His actions under this Act bind his successors, i.e. the government.
It is sad to see such a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the law.
He said "we have no mandate to punish those who abuse the law but to recommend...to the government". This is wrong.
Section 14(1) authorises the executive director to obtain a court warrant to enter premises, access the books of accounts or other documents relating to the trade or business... and the taking of the copies of an such books of accounts or other documents.
Anyone aggrieved by the action of the executive director of ZCC may appeal to the High Court and the Supreme Court.
Person is defined to include companies, associations, partnerships, etc. With regard to prosecutions, section 16 (1) says "any person who:-
a) contravenes or fails to comply with any provision of this Act...or any directive or order lawfully given or any requirement lawfully imposed under this Act....
(b) omits or refuses to furnish any information when required to do so,
(c) refuses to produce any documents when required to do so, or
(d) knowingly furnishes any false information to the Commission....
shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding K10 million or imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or both.
Most Acts now contain references to "penalty units" to deal with the varying kwacha value. But this has nothing to do with the principal claim that ZCC has no power to take action against state-owned companies.
Before concluding this discourse, let us refer to the announcement by the Cotton Association of Zambia and the Zambia Cotton Ginnery Association of a uniform price per kilogramme to be paid to the cotton farmers. This follows what are referred to as lengthy deliberations by various representatives numbering at least eleven. This appeared in the Times of Zambia of May 20, 2009 on page 15.
The price is what will be paid to the growers and clearly contravenes Part III: Anti Competitive Practices etc, section 7 (1) "Any category of agreements, decisions and concerted practices which have as their objectives, the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition to an appreciable extent in Zambia... are declared anti-competitive trade practices and are thereby prohibited".
Specifically, section 7(2)(g) colluding, in the case of monopolies of two or more manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, contractors, suppliers of services, in setting a uniform price in order to eliminate competition..." is prohibited.
The only time ZCC is required to get the approval of the minister is in sections 13 and 17 when regulations are required to be made governing; (a) anything which under this Act is required or permitted to be prescribed; (b) any forms necessary or expedient for the purposes of this Act; (c) any fees payable in respect of any service provided by the Commission; (d) such other matters as are necessary or expedient for the better carrying out of the purposes of this Act.
In conclusion, the ZCC claim is false. The requirement to extend the penalty or fine beyond K 10 million is a routine matter which the government dealt with long before now. ZCC has a primary duty to protect consumer welfare. No state-owned trading company in Zambia is exempt from obeying the competition and fair trade Act. what is missing is enforcement by ZCC.
Labels: ANDREW KASHITA, MONOPOLIES, PARASTATALS, ZCC
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Zamtel is a monopoly, insists economist
Written by Chiwoyu Sinyangwe
Wednesday, December 17, 2008 6:17:44 AM
ZAMBIA Development Agency (ZDA) chief executive officer Andrew Chipwende is exhibiting a very poor understanding of competition issues by saying that Zamtel is not a monopoly,
UK-based economist Chola Mukanga has observed.
Reacting to Chipwende’s observation last week that Zamtel was not a monopoly, Mukanga said higher costs of entry into the international gateway (IGW), coupled with the political stance preventing emergence of alternative gateways were some of issues that made Zamtel have monopolistic control of the international avenue system.
Last week, Chipwende said Zamtel was not a monopoly and that any of the two mobile companies operating in the country could access the International gateway provided they paid the required statutory entry fee of US $12 million.
But Mukanga observed that in terms of distortion of competition, all the experts in the industry including the World Bank agreed that Zamtel distorts competition, beyond control of the gateway.
“Andrew (Chipwende) is exhibiting a very poor understanding of competition issues. It is true Zamtel is not a statutory monopoly because the gateway is liberalised,” Mukanga said.
“The point is that the higher cost of entry into the international gateway, coupled with the political stance preventing emergence of alternative gateways such as a quasi planning restraint - even if you can pay the IGW licence fee, the government is unwilling to give you the licence, prevents other players from emerging in the international segment market. This makes Zamtel a de-facto monopoly.
As for who "controls" the IGW, Chipwende would do well to familiarise himself with previous submissions from the Zambia Competition Commission (ZCC) like the 2003 submission to the Select Committee on Transport and Communication which stated that ‘the position of Zamtel means that it has the power to prevent, restrict or distort competitor access to this essential infrastructure such as the IGW which was built with public funds’.”
And Mukanga, who welcomed the government’s initiative to do a comprehensive evaluation of Zamtel and exploring partial privatization as one of the alternatives, urged the government not to just focus on Zamtel strategy saying there was need to come up with a holistic communication strategy for the country.
“The government needs to take a step back and ask tough questions about the communication industry and where Zamtel fits in, before proceeding with restructuring the parastatal. This should be done through formal conversations with Zambian infrastructure experts at home and abroad,” said Mukanga.
Chipwende last week said he did not agree that Zamtel was a monopoly because anyone could access the IGW, arguing that the Communications Authority (CA), and not Zamtel, controlled the IGW, adding that Zain Zambia and MTN Zambia’s failure to access the IGW was as a result of their failure to pay the reqired entry fee.
Labels: ANDREW CHIPWENDE, CHOLA MUKANGA, MONOPOLIES, ZAMTEL, ZDA
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OMCs blame govt for fuel shortages
By Kabanda Chulu
Tuesday November 20, 2007 [03:00]
Government monopoly in crude oil importation is responsible for the fuel problems in the country, Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) have claimed. The OMCs want the government to liberalise importation of crude oil in order to resolve the problem of fuel shortages in the country.
The OMCs were reacting to energy minister Kenneth Konga’s statement that the government would not liberalise the importation of crude oil because some players may find a way of bringing substandard products into Zambia.
Enfin Energy Consultants managing partner Andrew Kamanga said the government should get the private sector more involved in the procurement of feedstock as a way of preventing frequent fuel crises.
Kamanga said there was need for the government to allow the private sector to participate more in the procurement of feedstock.
"If government is having difficulties in the procurement of feedstock, why not get the private sector on board?" Kamanga asked.
"At the moment, the rules are that only government can procure the feedstock and the solution to the existing fuel crisis lies in the private sector managing that side of the business."
Kamanga said the private sector had more financial strength and capability to manage the acquisition of feedstock.
And a representative of one of the major OMCs in the country who sought anonymity said the Energy Regulation Board (ERB) was capable of monitoring the industry’s operations and performance and there was no need for the government to worry about the standards.
“The lack of competitiveness in the importation of crude oil in Zambia is a major contributor to the fuel problems because currently, government has absolute monopoly in the importation of crude oil. But this needs to be revised to suit the best competition principles since competition in crude oil importation will definitely reduce the abnormal costs being experienced in the country,” the official stated.
“In a liberalised economy like Zambia, consumers deserve better petroleum services and it is ironic for a poor country like ours with low purchasing power to have the highest prices of petroleum products in the region.”
ERB communications manager Kwali Mfuni declined to comment on the matter, preferring that a press query was written before a response was given.
Last Friday in Parliament, Monze member of parliament Jack Mwiimbu asked Konga why OMCs were not allowed to import unfinished fuel products in order to stabilise the supply of the commodity.
In response, Konga said the government would not liberalise the importation of petroleum feedstock because some players may find a way of bringing in substandard products.
“The ERB Act enables different players on the market to trade openly in petroleum products but the only problem is that we will end up with substandard products since there are no strict monitoring systems in place,” Konga said.
He said the government would in future develop a framework to guide the importation of crude oil in line with free market policies.
“Refusing the OMCs to import crude oil is not going against the policies of economic liberalisation per se but there is need to put in place various issues and safety gauge measures before we allow the OMCs to be part of the importation process of the petroleum feedstock.”
Labels: FUEL, MONOPOLIES, OMCs
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