The prices of fuel at the pump are expected to remain relatively stable for the first pricing window in September 2018.

Research Analyst at the IES Mikdad Mohammed said the stability can be attributed to the reduction in prices of finished products such as gasoline and gasoil. He added that the stability of the cedi against the major trading currencies such as the dollar is also a contributing factor.

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Mikdad Mohammed explains that despite the slight rise in the price of brent crude on the international market, prices of finished products have experienced a slight reduction.

“But for this particular window, the indices have changed slightly compared to the last window. There have been reductions in the price of gasoline and a very marginal increment for gasoil and the cedi over the period has also had some strength against the dollar. If you look at stock too, we already have a lot of gas oil in the system so over the period between the last window, from August 15 to August 29 when we did this analysis, there were no imports of gasoil; just gasoline which was around 43,600 metric tonnes.”

In the second pricing window in August fuel prices went up by about 2%. This led to the prices of petrol and diesel increasing by two percent to 4 cedis 95 pesewas.

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Consumers started calling on the National Petroleum Authority to step in with the price stabilization and recovery levy.

This led to some major oil marketing companies reducing their prices by about 0.4 and 0.5 pesewas per litre.

Mikdad Mohammed, however, says consumers will not be required to pay more at the pumps for this first pricing window in September.

“For this pricing window, we expect that competition will continue to work between the OMC’s. But for this window equally, even though prices are not supposed to move anyway, if there is going to be some movement it could be as a result of competition to see consumers buying fuel at a cheaper price. Because OMC’s would want to keep their market share and be within the range.”