PRIME Minister Ahmed Nazif has denied rumours that the Government is planning to raise the prices of oil products in Egypt, stressing that diesel shortages in some governorates would end within a fewdays. "This is a logistic crisis now being investigated by the Ministry of Oil. It will end soon," Nazif said yesterday in a Governors' Council meeting in theUpper Egyptian town of Minya. He added that the Government had no plans to raise oil prices. "These are rumours. The evidence is that some governorates have no problems with getting oil products," Nazif added. Long queues of cars jammed petrol stations in Greater Cairo governorates and some in the Delta three days ago. while a Ministry of Oil official maintained that some media outlets were behind the spread of rumours over prices raise. "There is no crisis. It's a matter of fear after false news that the prices will go up," Mahmoud Nazim, the deputy oil minister, said yesterday. He urged diesel consumers not to be taken in by rumours and to maintain their daily fuelling habits. Egypt's oil sector produces 40 million litre of diesel a day for local consumption, of which around 75 per cent is locally produced, while the rest is imported, according to Nazim. "We have already pushed additional amounts of diesel into markets during the last week. Everything will be OK within three to four days," the official added. A number of tour-bus drivers have complained they could not meet their travel itineraries due to the ongoing shortages in Cairo, Giza, Gharbia and Kafr el-Sheikh. In Qalubia, one of the Greater Cairo governorates, seven bakeries lodged complaints with police against the manager of a local gas station, alleging that the latter had charged them LE25 ($4) – instead of the usual rate of LE22 – per jerry can of diesel. One official at the State-run General Petroleum Authority attributed the supply shortage to the crop-harvesting season currently underway, when overall demand usually increases by some 15 per cent. However, according to Hossam Arafat, the Head of the fuel department at the Egyptian Federation of Chambers of Commerce, overall diesel stocks have fallen by as much as 40 per cent compared to the same period last year.
