Petrol prices to continue dropping

Motorists have seen a steady drop in petrol prices since last year. If the price of Brent crude oil continues to drop, motorists could see even cheaper petrol prices in February.
 
The petrol prices could reportedly drop by another R1 in the first week of February. That would mean drivers would have saved R4.15 a litre, since April last year.
 
The Department of Energy (DoE) said that the main contributing factor to the fuel price decreases was the continual drop in the crude oil prices. Oil prices have steadily been dropping since June 2014.
 
"The petrol market is a supply and demand market. From our side we can see that the supply is not going down, so you sit with an oversupply. That is one of the reasons why the oil price is so low," said Marius Luyt, head of public affairs at the Automotive Association of South Africa.
 
Not all good news
 
However, the weak Rand-Dollar exchange rate means that South Africans will not enjoy big petrol price cuts as other countries around the world have done.
 
Luyt explained that this exchange rate means that South African's have only enjoyed a 15% price drop. Though, if the Rand does not weaken any more, the downward trend in petrol will continue.
 
"You can't predict what is going to happen, but you can make an assumption that the Rand-Dollar exchange rate will not worsen that much, so in our prediction we can expect a downward trend in South Africa [for petrol prices]," said Luyt.