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Fuel shortages and the media’s failure
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted of the Weekly Media Update 2004-7
Monday February 16^th – Sunday February 22^nd 2004

The government media’s tendency to skirt the real causes to problems bedevilling the nation was evident in their reports on a resurgent fuel crisis. Although they acknowledged the recurrence of fuel shortages, they were less honest in explaining its causes. Rather, they tried to hide government’s hand in the crisis by presenting it instead as the knight in shining armour, just arrived to save the day for Zimbabwe.

The government media’s economy with the truth was illustrated by The Herald, Chronicle (17/2) and ZTV (17/02, 7am) reports that did not fully link the fuel shortage to government’s new import duty regime, which would have made it more expensive to import fuel.

These media merely announced: "The government had drastically reduced the duty on petroleum fuels from over 40 percent to between zero and five percent in a bid to maintain the stability in the prices of fuel."

ZTV also claimed that the reduction in duty was "expected to stabilize public transport fares and production costs for local companies…"

None of this explained why the cut in duty should have given rise to a fuel shortage, far less provide an explanation why the government’s apparently generous reduction in import duty would not translate into a drop in the price of fuel.

The government media blatantly avoided telling the simple truth: That fuel importers froze their imports when government announced without notice that the official exchange rate for import duty would be charged at the rate obtaining at the Reserve Bank’s foreign currency auction floor; approximately Z$3,750 to the US dollar, up from the old official rate of Z$824. This led to the fuel shortage – and the government’s drastic reduction of import duty to get supplies flowing again. So, far from stabilizing fuel prices, government’s decision seriously threatened them and undermined supplies.

Only the fluctuating exchange rate at the auction floor provided The Herald and Chronicle with the opportunity to note in passing the red herring that: "Fuel prices are likely to rise slowly, in line with the increase in the auction exchange rate, which is expected by most to follow the trend in underlying inflation."

Instead of owning up to the results of government’s precipitous action, the Chronicle (18/2) only chose to see the fuel shortage as emanating from greedy fuel procurers and garages, which it accused of "hoarding" fuel for speculative purposes. In its comment, Monitor operations of the fuel sector, the paper said it found it suspicious that fuel should suddenly "disappear from garages because the basis for calculating duty on fuel has been changed", adding that, "We do not believe the industry is facing shortages but that there is some suspicious cartel at work seeking to raise the price of fuel." This demonstrated that the paper was well aware of the real reason for the shortage – and willfully hid it with a childish conspiracy theory.

Similarly, an earlier issue of The Herald (16/2) did not question whether government’s sudden use of the prevailing foreign exchange auction rate to calculate duty on imported goods heralded an end to the two-tier exchange rate used in the country. The paper only appeared to celebrate the new import duties as a boost to government coffers.

Inexcusably, the private media ignored the issue altogether.

While the government media viewed the new import duty as another bold step to reset Zimbabwe’s badly dislocated economy, the private media depicted the same economy as still in agony. This was illustrated by The Zimbabwe Independent (20/2) stories: NECF fails to achieve goals; Zim owes US$1.8b; Bid to tap forex not easy and, Zim out of world top five tobacco exporters. Studio 7 (19/2) also revealed the expected decline in tobacco production, one of the country’s main foreign currency earners. According to the station, the country’s expected output of 60 million kg this season is a "25 percent reduction from last year’s 80 million kg." As a result, the station noted "Zimbabwe is no longer among the world’s top five tobacco producers" leaving Malawi, which expects "145million kg this season, the biggest producer in Africa."

Although ZTV (16/02, 8pm) reported that, "the country expects a crop size of around 60million kg," it conveniently omitted the fact that this was a 25 percent decline from last year.

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