Big petrol price increase coming in February

Data for the week ending 24 January shows that lower oil prices and a slightly stronger rand are not changing the trajectory for petrol and diesel price hikes in February.
End of week data from the Central Energy Fund (CEF) shows that fuel price recoveries remain tilted to towards under-recoveries—between 86 and 93 cents per litre for petrol, and around R1.10 per litre for diesel.
This comes despite the rand pulling back from recent highs over R19/$ and oil prices pulling below $80 a barrel.
While the impact of these turns is evident in the daily spot data, it takes time for this to feed through to the average.
The Department of Petroleum and Mineral Resources uses an overall picture of the month when determining the price adjustments.

2025 started on the back door for fuel prices, with a 12 cents per litre hike kicking in at the start of January.
This is likely to have an adverse on the inflation print for the month—something that will continue into February, putting upwards pressure on overall inflation in the first quarter of the year.
According to economists at Nedbank, inflation is forecast to drift upwards in the months ahead but will still average a muted 4% in 2025. This mild upward pressure is likely to come from food and fuel prices as they start to climb off a much lower base.
“Fuel price deflation (seen over the past year) will gradually fade and reverse. While global oil prices are forecast to decline, a low base and a weaker rand will slowly lift local fuel prices to higher ground,” the bank warned.
“The recent mild upward rise in fuel prices is expected to continue.”
The rand’s weakness is primarily being driven by the wider context of global markets, where the new Doland Trump presidency is creating waves of uncertainty in relation to trade and tariffs.
Ahead of the Trump’s inauguration at the start of the week, markets were risk-off and bracing for a slew of executive orders targetting tariffs.
These orders never materialised in a direct way, easing some of these tensions, but the path forward is still paved with the US president’s big talk around China, as well as steep tariffs on its neighbours to the north and south, Canada and Mexico.
A more material impact of the Trump presidency has emanated from the US Federal Reserve, which has taken a much more muted tone on interest rate cuts, giving clear indications that the path will be long and slow.
Most market expectations have flipped from seeing a series of cuts in 2025, to perhaps just one or two. Locally, these expectations have shifted for the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) as well.
Economists have noted that the local central bank is unlikely to cut rates faster or ahead of the Fed, which would risk even more rand weakness.
The rand has had an arduous journey over the past two months, trading near to R17/$ ahead of the US elections in November, crumbling to over R19/$ ahead of Trump’s inauguration, before finally easing to under R18.50/$ this week.
Oil markets more positive
Global oil prices are more positive for motorists, with Trump’s policies actually dampening demand.
The US president’s stance on tariffs, demands to OPEC regions, and talk of increasing US oil production have hit oil futures, with prices dropping from around $85 a barrel to under $78 a barrel by this week’s end.
Trump raised the prospect of trade wars and said he will ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to lower prices in his first few days as the new US president.
One of Trump’s executive orders this week was to declare a national energy emergency to help boost domestic production. In his first term, the president repeatedly called on OPEC+ to lower prices when he felt they were too high.
This has also driven speculation about the potential shift in global supply balance, according to Senior Market Analyst at XTB MENA, Hani Abuagla, which has contributed to bearish sentiment in the market.
According to Bloomberg analysis of the market, oil futures are on track for the biggest weekly loss since November.
However, prices are still higher in 2025 relative to the end of 2024 after a cold Northern Hemisphere winter drove up heating demand and US sanctions on Russia upended crude markets.