Ten billion to cushion the pump, three years since anyone looked at the margin
Petrol broke R30 a litre on 7 October and Parliament is moving R10bn into the fuel Equalisation Fund. The reform that would show what sits inside the price was last discussed in committee in September 2023.
On 7 October inland 95 petrol rose R3.33 to R30.25 a litre. That is about R166.50 more to fill a 50-litre tank and R3.58 more a litre for paraffin. On Baneng Naape's numbers in Daily Maverick (7 October), a truck burning 4,000 litres of diesel a month pays more than R12,000 extra. It also comes after September's rate increase took prime to 10.75%.
Parliament's answer is taking shape. IOL/The Star reported (12 October) that the Standing Committee on Appropriations adopted its report on the Second Special Appropriation Bill on 8 October. The bill sends R10 billion to the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources for the Equalisation Fund in the Central Energy Fund. The money is meant to stabilise prices but "does not automatically mean lower fuel prices." Questions remain about how it will work, who benefits, how long it lasts and how its impact will be measured. Committee chair Mmusi Maimane wants relief before December. The committee also asked the finance and mineral resources ministers to report on when relief should be triggered in future shocks.
Temporary relief for an extraordinary shock is defensible. Naape argues for exactly that: time-bound, and funded by reprioritising other spending. But his list goes beyond the levy. He also asks for "a transparent review of regulated margins and the slate mechanism" and, over the longer term, more competition in fuel supply and storage. That second half is the live debate under Fuel Price Regulation Reform — Partial Deregulation. The proposal has three parts: deregulate inland retail margins, while keeping the fuel levy and RAF levy regulated; end the blanket coastal-to-inland cross-subsidy; and set up a petroleum market monitor at NERSA that publishes regional prices and margins every month.
The page lists the idea as "proposed": raised three times in committee and last discussed in September 2023. Its roadmap dates for amending the Petroleum Products Act (Q2 2026) and for zone-based pricing (Q3 2026) have passed. COSATU fears deregulation would raise prices for rural and low-income users. That concern is fair, and it is the reason to start with the monitor: nobody can argue usefully about margins that aren't published.
The textbook's Chapter 3 shows why the levy side is the hard side. Its Tier 2 list includes a ring-fenced infrastructure-maintenance levy, perhaps a surcharge on fuel, with the Road Accident Fund levy as the precedent. It names motorists among the likely resisters and finds "no ready coalition." At R30 a litre, the politics push towards taking cents off the litre, not adding them. So the useful step before the next R10 billion is a smaller one: publish the margin and slate numbers monthly, and agree in advance on the rule for when relief kicks in, which the committee has already asked the ministers to report on. The next decision would then be faster, better targeted and easier to defend.