State House moved on Monday 2 November to answer public anger over two consecutive fuel price rises, with its Chief Communications Strategist, Whitney Mulobela, saying President Hakainde Hichilema was working to ease the effect on households, businesses and farmers. In a Facebook post quoted by the Zambia Daily Mail, Mulobela said the government was working round the clock on it. The Zambian Observer, reporting the same statement, quoted him as saying the frustration was legitimate.
Mulobela's explanation for the increases was external. Brent crude, he said, was trading at about US$112 a barrel, roughly 73 per cent above its level a year earlier, and attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz had unsettled supply. Zambia imports all of its refined petroleum. The Energy Regulation Board's review on Saturday 31 October set petrol at K33.06 a litre and diesel at K34.45, which News Diggers put at increases of K1.60 and K1.18 respectively, following what State House described as a K6 rise in October.
Why the tax holiday was not extended
Between April and September the government suspended excise duty on fuel and zero-rated it for VAT. Mulobela said those measures, together with the ERB's price-smoothing mechanism, held pump prices between K25 and K28 a litre, allowed a cut in August, and kept diesel stocks at about 60 days of national cover, at a cost to the Treasury of roughly US$200 million in revenue forgone. The relief had been premised on global conditions calming, he said, and they did not. The choice, as he framed it, was between an open-ended fuel subsidy and funding for free education, the enhanced Constituency Development Fund, school feeding and the Social Cash Transfer. Excise duty returned in October; according to the Observer, VAT is to return in phases from Tuesday 1 December.
The Observer's report carried a regional comparison supplied with the statement: at about K20 to the US dollar, petrol in Malawi was put at about K65 a litre, Zimbabwe K41, South Africa K37, Namibia K32, Tanzania K31, Mozambique K30 and Botswana K29, the last with levies suspended. Mulobela said Zambia's diesel was cheaper than South Africa's, Mozambique's or Malawi's.
The same report recalled that the President has ordered a review of the ERB's monthly pricing cycle, having told Parliament on Friday 9 October that frequent changes make it hard for families to budget and for businesses to plan, and that the new Ministry of Petroleum under Makozo Chikote, created when the Energy Ministry was split on Wednesday 28 October, lists among its priorities a US$1.1 billion, 60,000-barrel-a-day refinery at Ndola targeted for the end of 2028, a 1,400-kilometre pipeline from Lobito to Lusaka, tied to the Lobito refinery in which Zambia holds a 26 per cent stake, local ethanol blending and a directive that public bodies buy only electric vehicles. Zambia spent US$2.11 billion importing refined fuel in 2024, the Observer reported.
The marketers' counter-argument
The Oil Marketing Companies Association of Zambia takes a different view of where the pressure comes from. Its president, Dr Kafula Mubanga, told News Diggers that prices would keep rising unless the government restructured the Open Access Framework governing the TAZAMA pipeline. He accused a small number of marketing companies of exploiting limited competition on the line to earn excessive margins, which he put at about K5 a litre, and argued that opening the pipeline to more Zambian-owned firms would bring prices down. The rest of his remarks sit behind the paper's paywall.
Personally, I don't like it.
— President Hakainde Hichilema on the monthly fuel pricing cycle, addressing Parliament on Friday 9 October, as quoted by the Zambian Observer on Monday 2 November
Sources: Zambia Daily Mail, “Govt working to cushion fuel prices – State House” (2 Nov 2026); Zambian Observer, “Govt Attributes Fuel Hikes to Global Instability, Says Prices Still Among Lowest in SADC” (2 Nov 2026); News Diggers, “Fuel prices will keep rising unless govt changes pipeline policy – OMCAZ” (2 Nov 2026).