The past 12 months have brought continued relief for South African motorists, with a total of R2.90 per litre in petrol price cuts since June 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Department of Petroleum and Mineral Resources announced a small cut to petrol prices taking effect on Wednesday (4 June), the fourth decline in pricing this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2025 started off with a petrol price hike, continuing the trend of rising prices in the last two months of 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rising prices tracked global market volatility around the United States presidential elections and resultant uncertainty when Donald Trump was re-elected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the rise in prices was not enough to undo a continued decline in pricing following the May 2024 elections in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the decline in prices cannot be attributed to local conditions alone, the outcome of the 2024 elections in May last year played a critical role in strengthening the rand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rand\/dollar exchange rate is one of the two main components factoring into local fuel price recoveries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A strong turn in sentiment towards South Africa with the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU) after the elections had a significant impact on rand strength at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite rand strength boosting recoveries in the latter half of 2024, concerns over global growth in a Trump presidency led to relatively small declines in recoveries (thus petrol price increases) at the end of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This continued into 2025. A particularly surprising focus on South Africa by the Trump administration in the early months of the year also played havoc with the exchange rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Weathering a storm of political trouble around South Africa’s 2025 budget, the country managed to maintain an uneasy balance in recoveries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A huge decline in global oil prices of around 15% since the start of the year thanks to the Trump administration’s tariff war helped motorists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tracking petrol price movements between June 2024 and 2025, petrol prices for Petrol 93 are lower by R2.67, Petrol 95 by R2.90 and diesel prices are R2.43 lower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The continued decline in fuel prices has been a significant boon for inflation in South Africa, helping to keep headline CPI below the South African Reserve Bank’s target range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following a few years or sticky inflation, CPI slowly moved towards the 4.5% SARB target and then below the lower-bound of the range (3%) in early 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While many economists expected inflation to start rising again, back towards 4.5%, it has constantly surprised to the downside, staying under the 3%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At its most recent Monetary Policy Committee meeting, the Reserve Bank attributed this lower-than-expected inflation level to declining fuel prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The central bank has also adjusted its average CPI expectation for the year lower to 3.6% from over 4.0% before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks to the low inflation environment, the Reserve Bank was confident enough to cut interest rates by 25 basis points in May, taking cumulative cuts to 100bp since September 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If inflation continues to follow this lower trend, the likelihood of further cuts of 25bp could follow, despite ongoing certainty in global markets due to the tariff war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For fuel prices, the outlook is positive, with economists anticipating the rand to maintain its current levels or strengthen further, while oil markets are expected to remain volatile, but with a tilt towards lower demand and higher supplies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Petrol prices in South Africa have come down significantly since the formation of the Government of National Unity in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":789805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[20009,2923],"class_list":["post-826707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-gnu","tag-petrol-prices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826707"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826863,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826707\/revisions\/826863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Month<\/th> Petrol 93<\/th> Petrol 95<\/th> Diesel 0.05%<\/th><\/tr><\/thead> Starting price <\/strong>(June 2024)<\/td> R23.91<\/td> R24.25<\/td> R20.96<\/td><\/tr> July 2024<\/td> -105<\/mark><\/td> -99<\/mark><\/td> -30<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> August 2024<\/td> -15<\/mark><\/td> -15<\/mark><\/td> -28<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> September 2024<\/td> -92<\/mark><\/td> -92<\/mark><\/td> -79<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> October 2024<\/td> -106<\/mark><\/td> -114<\/mark><\/td> -114<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> November 2024<\/td> +25<\/mark><\/td> +25<\/mark><\/td> +21<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> December 2024<\/td> +17<\/mark><\/td> +17<\/mark><\/td> +55<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> January 2025<\/td> +19<\/mark><\/td> +12<\/mark><\/td> +8<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> February 2025<\/td> +82<\/mark><\/td> +82<\/mark><\/td> +105<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> March 2025<\/td> -7<\/mark><\/td> -7<\/mark><\/td> -18<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> April 2025<\/td> -58<\/mark><\/td> -72<\/mark><\/td> -84<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> May 2025<\/td> -22<\/mark><\/td> -22<\/mark><\/td> -42<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> June 2025<\/td> -5<\/mark><\/td> -5<\/mark><\/td> -37<\/mark><\/td><\/tr> Ending price <\/strong>(June 2025)<\/td> R21.24<\/td> R21.35<\/td> R18.53<\/td><\/tr> Net change<\/strong><\/td> -R2.67<\/strong><\/mark><\/td> -R2.90<\/strong><\/mark><\/td> –R2.43<\/strong><\/mark><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Fuel prices helping to keep inflation low<\/h2>\n\n\n\n