Fuel prices have not gone up, says govt

A fuel pump. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- In yesterday’s edition, Daily Monitor in a story titled: “A fuel price puzzle difficult to explain” revealed that the prices of petrol had increased to Shs5,040 in the week ending January 10.
The government yesterday clarified that the prices of fuel have not gone up and asked private dealers to stop cheating consumers. Officials from the Uganda National Oil Company (Unoc), the government agency solely responsible for importing all fuel products, yesterday insisted that they are not responsible for the increasing fuel prices on different pump stations of two giant private dealers; Shell and TotalEnergies.
Unoc Chief Corporate Officer Tony Otoa said all private dealers have been buying petroleum products from Unoc at the same price since last July when they started importing them.
“Those private dealers should provide you with the prices they buy from us. If there are changes, then you can get back to us, but as I said yesterday, nothing has changed on our side,” he said.
Mr Otoa added: “When you buy a crate of beer at Nile Breweries, it’s the same price but when you reach in ghettos the bottle can go for Shs4,000 while the same bottle will cost you Shs12,000 in a big hotel, so the problem is not ours.”
The spokesperson for Vivo Energy Uganda, which is the licenced operator and distributor of Shell products in Uganda, Mr Valery Okecho, when asked about what informs the price increment, referred this publication to the Energy ministry. The development comes days after Energy minister Ruth Nankabirwa told reporters in Kampala that the government wants to cut fuel prices to at least one dollar (about Shs3,670).
“I did my...calculations, and realised that even when you [private dealers] reduce the price of a litre to one dollar, you still make profits,” she said on January 2. The government enacted the Petroleum Supply (Amendment) Act, of 2023, which empowered Unoc to take over the importation of all petroleum products and later sell to all dealers.
The move was also due to a shift in policy, in which Kenya had moved from the Open Tender System to Government-Government, a process deemed lengthy with stakeholders whose profit margins could impact pump prices. Unoc imported its first purchase of 170 million litres of fuel, including 80 million litres of petrol and 90 million litres of diesel last July. Official figures show the country consumes six million litres every day.
“The fuel prices went down tremendously and have been stable since Unoc began sole importation. At the time of the takeover, the prices of petrol were between Shs5,000 and Shs5300, but since then the majority of oil companies have kept it at between Shs4,990 and Shs5,000, and between Shs4300 and Shs4700 for diesel,” an official from Unoc, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media, said yesterday.
Mr Anthony Ogalo, the general manager of the Sustainable Energy and Petroleum Association of Uganda, an umbrella association of oil marketing firms, earlier told Monitor that the firms have responded to movements in the global market.
Fuel price puzzle
In yesterday’s edition, Daily Monitor in a story titled: “A fuel price puzzle difficult to explain” revealed that the prices of petrol had increased to Shs5,040 in the week ending January 10 compared to last December while diesel prices had risen to Shs4,990 from Shs4,770 in Kampala and were higher in upcountry stations.