Zimbabwe is running out of fuel 

Zimbabwe is running out of fuel according to the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority’s (Zera) acting chief executive officer Eddington Mazambani.

He told parliament on Thursday that the country had exhausted the $60 million worth of fuel imported last week, Pindula reported on Friday.

“The $60 million foreign currency which was released for fuel has already been exhausted because it came when we were at zero in terms of fuel supplies,” said Mazambani.

“The $60 million is about 100 million litres of fuel and it will be gone in about two-and-a-half weeks, and because we are at zero everyone wants to fill up their vehicles, and we do not know how much per week the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) allocates to oil companies.”

Meanwhile, US Senators said new Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa – who took over the country in last year’s military coup, which led many Zimbabweans to believe a new and brighter era had dawned on the country in the wake of the overthrow of former president Robert Mugabe, was saying the right things but not producing real results.

Chris Coons, a Republican senator from New Jersey who visited Zimbabwe during the elections this year, said that although there was indeed a significantly more open society and economy than under Mugabe, the country fell “significantly short of what a free, fair, and open society is where rule of law dominates, elections happen regularly, opposition is free to speak and where the press is truly unhindered”.

Outgoing Republican Arizona senator Jeff Flake, who is behind the recent revisions to the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Amendment Act of 2018 which lays out conditions of reform for the country to regain full US support, reiterated what Coons said.

The opposition MDC Alliance is still refusing to acknowledge Mnangagwa’s election marginal victory announced in August and preceded by the fatal shooting of six people in the capital Harare, where soldiers were deployed to put down protests against poll rigging.