HARARE, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Scenes of motorists in long queues for fuel continue to prevail in Harare and other areas, while some service stations have formed social media groups where they inform their customers on when they expect deliveries.
Service stations continue to ration both petrol and diesel to ensure that as many motorists as possible get a share.
However, despite the long queues at the dispensing filling stations and product unavailability at many others, Minister of Energy and Power Development Joram Gumbo has insisted that there is enough fuel in the country.
He told Monday's Herald newspaper that service stations were getting the normal supplies of a combined eight million liters daily.
He attributed the long queues to panic buying by motorists in anticipation of price increases and the festive season.
"There is an unprecedented demand of fuel in the country," he said.
"We require 4.1 million liters of diesel per day and 3.8 million liters of petrol a day and that is what the fuel companies are getting. We had asked the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to raise the foreign currency allocation to 32 million U.S. dollars per week to meet the rising demand up from the 20 million dollars it was previously allocating, but access to forex has been a challenge."
He said the demand may have been fuelled by the anticipation of a price hike, farming season preparations and the festive season.
But despite the assurances of adequate supplies, Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Ncube last week said that the shortages had been caused by delays in the making of payments and transport logistics.
