Major OMCs reduce fuel prices

Some major Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) have reduced their prices by 4 pesewas within the first pricing window of June.

The reduction comes after a 3 percent increase in prices of fuel in the early part of June.

Earlier, checks by Citi Business News showed that a litre each of diesel and petrol were selling for 4 cedis 89 pesewas.

But as of May 11, 2018, Goil, Shell and Total, were each selling a litre of petrol and diesel at 4 cedis 85 pesewas.

This translated into a drop in the price of a gallon of petrol and diesel from 18 cedis 50 pesewas to 18 cedis 36 pesewas.

Fuel prices increase in 1st window in June

The drop in prices, however, comes after the Institute of Energy Security (IES) announced that prices of fuel are likely to go up by about 2 percent for the second pricing window in May.

According to the institute, its prediction was premised on the rise in the global oil prices as well as the marginal depreciation of the cedi.

But checks, however, showed that major OMCs rather reduced the price of fuel by 4 pesewas.

IES forecast

According to IES, it expected fuel prices to go up by about 2 percent for the second pricing window in May.

The IES warned that consumers should brace themselves for a price increase.

“For this particular pricing window, we are looking at an increment of between 1.5% and 2%. This is as a result of some of the factors that we always relied on, there have been some increases. When you look at the standard benchmark, gasoline moved up by 2.55% and is now selling at around 712 dollars per metric tonne from a previous average of 694 dollars per metric tonne” A Policy Analyst at the Institute of Energy Security(IES), Mikdad Mohammed, told Citi Business News earlier.

Source: citinewsroom.com