Fuel increase: what it means for the Lowveld

Government has announced an extension on the temporary relief in the fuel levy, but fuel prices increased nonetheless. This will have a snowball effect on many other industries.

The COO of the Kruger Lowveld Chamber of Business and Tourism (KLCBT), Linda Grimbeek, said this will influence costs of goods as well as transport, farming, tourism and electricity.

“I am especially worried about those businesses with a long turnaround time when it comes to profit, for example farming. You have to plan a year in advance and budget; when the cost increases this drastically it influences your viability on the most basic level.”

Speaking on tourism, Grimbeek said they saw the same drastic increase in fuel prices a few years ago. “What happens then is people rather opt for longer vacations once or twice a year rather than travelling every weekend.”

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She said this will then result in less weekend traffic for the Lowveld. Further, she said, businesses will have to start thinking of their personnel.

“You cannot expect your employees to absorb this increase on their own, because it is too drastic. You will find that businesses will either have to provide a stipend towards fuel or transport costs, or have their workers come into work less often.”

One profession heavily reliant on travel, especially in the Lowveld context, is tour guiding.

Mario Paul, a local tour operator, said he travels to the Kruger National Park and back to Mbombela daily.

“To give you an idea, before Covid we used about R650 of diesel on a normal day trip. Before the increase it is about R1 000 per day, and it will be even more now. “The only thing I can do is to increase my prices for a game drive, but then clients start complaining and they cannot afford it any longer.”

He said even though international guests have started coming back slowly, they still rely on the local market. It is not just the prices of a game drive that go up, it also costs people more to go on vacation.

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“At the end of the day people are going to cut on luxuries and the tourism sector will be negatively affected. “After the Covid pandemic that hit us extremely hard, this is the last thing we need. The industry slowly started finding its feet, but I am afraid this may bring a lot of us to our knees and shut doors.”