Petrol price rises by Ksh.3.56 while diesel and kerosene costs remain unchanged

Petrol users will bear the burden of higher costs after a Ksh.3.56 price hike in the latest fuel price review.

The mid-month review by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) has nevertheless left diesel and kerosene costs unchanged.

The average cost of petrol is now set to cross the Ksh.125 mark from Saturday morning marking another grim milestone on living costs for Kenyans.

A litre of petrol in the capital Nairobi will now cost Ksh.126.37 while diesel and kerosene costs will hold steady for the second month running at Ksh.107.66 and Ksh.97.85 respectively.

The rise in petrol costs is against a 0.6 per cent decrease in the average landed costs.

Nevertheless, the surge is traceable from the restoration of supplier margins following an unexplained and surprise cut last month.

On April 14, EPRA surprised the country by leaving all petroleum costs unchanged from March in spite of a surge in landed costs.

This was however attributable to a slash in supplier margins for the period.

Documents in the possession of Citizen Digital said the Petroleum Ministry held negotiations with oil marketers to trim the margins, sparing Kenyans from a rise in fuel costs last month.

However, despite plans for a petroleum price stabilization framework, there exists no legal framework work for the actualization of the same.

Queries by Citizen Digital to both EPRA and the Ministry in the past month regarding the slash in margins have gone unanswered.

This month, EPRA has restored supplier margins for super petrol back to Ksh.12.39 after slashing the margins to Ksh.7.95 last month.

Margins for the supply of diesel and kerosene however remain slashed at Ksh.11.72 and Ksh.8.93 respectively against normalized margins of Ksh.12.36 each.

This means that oil marketing companies (OMCs) are still being obliged to cushion Kenyans from effective diesel and kerosene costs.

The marketers being compensated by the National Treasury from tax payers fund in spite of no legal mechanism to support such payments leaving the government open for litigation.

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diesel EPRA kerosene petrol

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