Motorists will have to dig deeper into their pockets as fuel prices go up beginning today.
The price of super petrol has risen to a seven-month high, consistently going up since February this year and slowly getting close to the levels it reached when the Government slapped Kenyans with value added tax on petroleum products.
According to the monthly price capping guide by the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra), retail price of diesel will go up by a slight margin while that of kerosene will drop marginally.
Super petrol will go up by Sh3.07 and now retail at Sh115.10 in Nairobi, inching closer to Sh118 that it was retailing at last year September when the Government instituted eight per cent VAT.
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An earlier 16 per cent VAT had pushed the price of a litre of petrol to a record Sh127.8.
Diesel, heavily used by the transport industry as well as manufacturers, will go up by 39 cents while kerosene will decline marginally by 34 cents. A litre of diesel will retail at Sh104.76 and that of kerosene will be Sh104.28 in Nairobi.
Slight drop
Epra attributed the higher prices of petrol and diesel to a rise in cost of the two products on their arrival in Mombasa. This was despite a slight drop in price of crude oil during the month of May, when the current stock of petroleum products was acquired.
A barrel of oil went for $72.35 (Sh7,235) on average last month, compared to $73.05 in April. A slightly weaker shilling may have seen the landed cost in Mombasa rise.
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“Petroleum pump prices in Nairobi are as follows – super petrol and diesel increase by Sh3.07 ad Sh0.39 per litre respectively while that of kerosene decreases by Sh0.34 per litre,” said the regulator when it published the monthly fuel capping guide yesterday.
“The Free on Board price for Murban crude oil lifted in May 2019 was posted at $72.35 per barrel, a decrease of 0.96 per cent compared to April. Over the same period, the mean monthly US Dollar to Kenya Shilling exchange rate depreciated from Sh101.12 in April to Sh101.20 in May.”
Fuel in far-flung towns will retail at well over Sh120, with the highest being Mandera, where a litre of petrol will retail at Sh127.95.
Globally, oil prices have been on a seesaw over the last year, peaking at $84 (Sh8,400) per barrel but dropped to $50 (Sh5,000) in December before starting to rally again to hit a high of $74.57 per barrel in April.
The drop in crude oil prices resulted in a reduction in local pump prices from Sh118 for a litre of petrol in November to Sh100 in February this year. At Sh100, this was the lowest price witnessed in the country since October 2017.
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