Johannesburg - The massive fuel price increase for the month of June will see the price of a basic food basket rocket to R4609, an increase of R462 in the past six months.
Without an extension, petrol prices would have hiked by almost R4 on Wednesday. Treasury has extended the cut to the general fuel levy. However the R1.50 relief will still have a major impact on the transportation industry as well as consumers basic food basket, forcing cash-strapped South Africans to dig even deeper for basics.
The transportation industry which is outraged by the fuel price increases which have posed serious challenges over the past few months has also weighed in on the impact of the price hike on the industry.
Road Freight Association chief executive Gavin Kelly said: “The recent increase in fuel – a bit lower than what we all feared – but it will inevitably drive the cost of transport and logistics up again, and with roughly 85% of all goods moved around the country having a road leg at some part in the journey, there will be increases in the cost to transport goods.”
Kelly said that there is a huge concern that other transporters will not be able to go on with business as the price of fuel will eventually get hard to keep up with as the constant fuel price increase now makes up more than half of daily operating costs
E-hailing drivers spokesperson Vhatuka Mbelengwa called for all fuel levies to be scrapped.
“As we experience exorbitant hikes in fuel cost the extremely abusive levies that can be suspended are also collecting much more revenue.
“If levies would be reduced from the 66% cost to less than 20% of the total cost of a litre of fuel, we may just be able to survive the crisis with minimal impact on all South African lives”
Santaco’s Bafana Magagula has also said taxi commuters can expect minibus taxi fares to increase.
In terms of food, South African consumers are already paying almost 12% more for food than they were last year. They can only expect to dig a little deeper into their pockets in the month of June.
Pietermaritzburg economic justice and dignity group, programme co-ordinator, Mervyn Abrahams, said: “We released our household affordability index this morning for May and the basket now stands at R4609.81 which is an increase of about R67 from last month and a R462 increase over the past 6 months and we will only see more increases due to the fuel price hike.”
Various basic food basket items prices have spiked massively over the past few months, such as cake flour which increased by 30%, cooking oil increased by 52% year on year, bread increased by 10%, tin pilchards increased by 13%, margarine increased by15% and polony increased by 36% just to name a few.
Other household essentials such as paraffin will also increase by R1.56 a litre.
IOL