Midnight, and still no signature: the fuel-tax holiday lapses tonight — and the ERB's October numbers follow within hours

This is the day the dashes run out. Statutory Instruments No. 56 and No. 61 of 2026 — the excise-duty suspension and the VAT zero-rating on petrol and diesel — expire at midnight tonight, and as this edition went to press on Wednesday morning, no extension had been gazetted, announced or leaked. Officials conceded at the weekend that no decision had been taken. If that is still true at dusk, the decision will have been made by default, at 23:59.

The stakes are written into the Energy Regulation Board's monthly arithmetic. September's review held the national uniform pump price at K25.29 for petrol, K26.86 for diesel, K27.02 for kerosene and K28.71 for Jet A-1 — and the regulator said plainly that stability was partly bought by the tax measures and its own price-smoothing mechanism. At K26.86, Zambian diesel is the cheapest of the six SADC pump prices tracked regionally, roughly a fifth below South Africa's inland benchmark and 21 per cent below Zambia's own May peak of K33.99. Restoring excise and VAT to the build-up hands the smoothing mechanism a third shock to absorb alongside oil and the exchange rate. It has never carried all three at once.

The calendar compresses everything into the same midnight. The ERB announces monthly reviews in the final days of the month, with new prices effective at midnight on the first — meaning the October statement is due within hours of the waiver's expiry, and will answer two questions at once: what the regulator thinks fuel costs, and what the Treasury thinks it can afford to forgive. An eleventh-hour extension is not without precedent — the July reprieve was announced at the edge of expiry — but a government that extends at midnight also admits, by the same act, that it waited until midnight.

The Treasury's books argue both ways, and both arguments are now public. The relief costs roughly US$200 million a quarter in forgone revenue, and the Cabinet-approved Green Paper for the 2027–2029 budget — published on Saturday — commits the government to broadening the tax base and rationalising exemptions, a description a fuel-tax holiday fits with uncomfortable precision. Against that stands the pump's place in the price chain: inflation eased to 6.1 per cent in September, inside the Bank of Zambia's band, but the IMF already projects it drifting back to 8.5 per cent by year's end partly on fuel. Energy expert Joshua Jere made the industry's case this month: extend, because the global oil market has not calmed. The kwacha — steady near K19.5 to the dollar, nearly 19 per cent firmer than a year ago — is the one variable in the formula currently pulling for the consumer.

What to watch tonight is not a press conference but a document. Extensions in this country are born as gazette notices, and the government printer is where this decision will show first. If no instrument appears, the October build-up will carry numbers where six months of dashes have been — and the same government that boasted of the relief in April will have ended it without a single sentence of explanation. The pump price on Thursday morning is the verdict either way.

Sources: Radio Phoenix, "Govt yet to decide on extension of fuel tax waivers" (26 Sep 2026); CNBC Africa/Reuters on the July extension and SIs 56 & 61 of 2026 (Jul 2026); ERB September 2026 pump-price statement (31 Aug 2026); Kweli corridor analysis of the ERB build-ups (Sep 2026); ZNBC on Joshua Jere's call (Sep 2026); ZamStats CPI bulletins (Sep 2026); IMF staff statement (May 2026); Trading Economics USD/ZMW (30 Sep 2026).