The Energy Regulation Board (ERB) has refuted accusations suggesting that it has increased the prices of fuel following the rebasing of the Kwacha.
Members of the public recently raised concerns that ERB increased the price of fuel for petrol and diesel by upwards rounding off the prices.
ERB Director for Consumer and Public Affairs Agness Phiri said the board operated within the technical guidelines given by the Bank of Zambia (BOZ) to all stakeholders.
Ms. Phiri told ZANIS in Lusaka today that institutions were allowed to round off upwards if the third decimal figure was higher or equivalent to five (5).
She said this was under the guidelines given by Bank of Zambia to all stakeholders.
She explained that the central bank’s instructions were that the figure should not be changed but removed if the third decimal figure was below five.
Ms. Phiri stressed that ERB had not effected a fuel price increase saying that rounding off the third decimal figure was a standard practice on rebasing by stakeholders in both the private and public sector.
ERB has been running public notices in various newspapers on new rebased prices for petrol, diesel and Kerosene whose prices were K8,155, K7,566, and K5,154 respectively and are now KR8.16, KR7.57, and KR5.15.
ZANIS
What happened to different money same value??
#1 – The difference between the values is negligible, simple arithmetic, you don’t need to understand calculus.
As negligible as it is but in the long run it will add up to something significant & some one will make millions. The issue is cumulatively that will be a profit to the seller plus the number of people buying that fuel is quite high. i will give you an example a 50 pin is nothing you can loose one & it wont hurt you in anyway, try putting a 50pin every month under your couch starting this January pa month-end till December then see how much will be under the couch
JFK, please dont just open yo mount or is it comment rubbish…first of all JFK estimate the litres these oil companies sale per day and multiply by the “negligible” amount, if the is passed on to a poor health care centre, imagin how much medicine will be procured…BOZ has tricked us, the pump prices have a provision of accomodating 3 decimals….different money same value should not be made to stress us more…let ERB go back and tell its oil company to increase the decimals…this happens everwhere…check the UK pump prices..
This issue is compensating, some prices go up while others go down. take the very example of diesel and petrol. Moreover, the up/downward change is always less than K5(old currency), like JFK has said, no Jacobian Matrices involved in this rounding off exercise
the change is less than K50(old currency) not K5 like I earlier said.
Ba Willie we talking per liter here, how many liters do people buy from a filling station on a given day?? chaps will be making millions per month out of this
8160 – 8155 = 0.005 or half ngwee (rebased).
Your Corolla’s full tank (if ever it gets it) is 55 litres.
27.5n per full tank lost. Negligible?
A full fuel tanker takes about 52,000litres. Multiply that by half ngwee = Kr260 additional money in the filling station’s pocket. If we donate 3m litres to Malawi again, we will lose Kr15,000. (Still negligible?)
mathematical your argument is negligibility i say you so negligent
imwe fi RB, oh! sorry, fi ERB, the arguement here is that the upward rounding off has resulted in an increace on the commodities and not on what directives you might have received from whoever.
The RB part was not fun you could have left it out, sorry!
I thought BP is now Puma everywhere?
We still have BP in kitwe and ndola naku kalulushi
Old picture of BP Longacres opposite the diplomatic square. I will not talk about rules of rounding off because the primary school teachers did their part. If BOZ or others have a different definition then they should be answerable for re-inventing simple arithmetics.
Most of the people complaining should advise the last time they were give K10 change. Or how many times the pump will give more than the figure you wanted by K10….people are making noise about rebasing but its been a clean exercise so far exceot the pessimists are busy search for fault…
Clean so far?? ZANACO has lost 2billion(old kwacha) as a result of re-basing, some intelligent but stupid chap has taken the money to his account
Why not set the price of at KR8.155 instead of KR8.16?
money does not have 3 decimal places
@ Abena George, that is exactly right!
@ EBD, petrol pumps DO have three decimal places and would easily round to the correct figure for each sale. In the United States, gas prices are nearly always quoted with a 9/10th of a cent at the end – e.g. $3.53 and 9/10 per gallon! It gets rounded off depending how much you buy.
What I don’t understand is why round the base price at all. Fuel pumps can be set to charge fractions of currency (in the US, fuel is nearly always priced with 9/10ths of a cent at the end) and will round off for each sale based on that fraction.
As for this being a trivial amount…. If we are now paying half a ngwee more per liter, this is maybe 15 ngwee more per full tank, or 45 ngwee more per month (say three thanks per month), and 5.4 Kwacha more per year. Alright, that’s not a lot but does add up.
It adds up even more across the entire country! Let’s say there are what… 2 million operational vehicles in Zambia? If so, KR 5.4 per vehicle per year x 2 million vehicles = KR 10.8 billion in extra charges so is a lot less money in our pockets because of unnecessary rounding.
i wonder what type of people our schools are producing if a simple issue like rounding off is seen to be strange and causing so much comotion……..since people want to agrue that ERB has increased the price then yes fine its increased deal with it and get on with work
They needed no instruction from boz this is simple arithmatic,just like 2011 general election results even without waitng for the remaining results Sata was declared a winner.Taukwetefye isukulu.