How South Africa's regulated fuel price is built, and what the terms on this site mean. Definitions follow the CEF / DMRE monthly price release — the same source the forecast reads.
The import-parity landed cost of the fuel: the international product price plus freight, insurance and landing costs — what it would cost to buy the refined fuel abroad and land it in South Africa. It is the cost basis of the regulated price, before any local margins, levies or taxes are added, and it is reviewed daily.
The regulated resale price at the wholesale (depot) level. Diesel and illuminating paraffin are regulated at wholesale — the state sets a maximum wholesale price, not a pump price.
The regulated maximum price at the pump. This is set for petrol. Diesel retail is deregulated — each station sets its own pump price — which is why the forecast personalises diesel from your local pump price rather than quoting a single national number.
The daily gap between the price consumers currently pay (its cost basis) and the actual Basic Fuel Price on the day. It is the single signal the monthly change is built on.
Over-recovery (a positive number) means the
regulated price is above current cost — so the price will tend to
fall. Under-recovery (a negative
number, shown in parentheses) means the price is below cost — so
it will tend to rise. Over a review period the monthly
change is approximately −(average unit recovery).
The recovery splits exactly into two drivers:
recovery = international-price movement + rand (FX) movement,
so a change can be attributed to global product prices versus the exchange
rate.
Daily over- and under-recoveries don't vanish — they accumulate in a running balance called the slate. Under the Self-Adjusting Slate Levy Mechanism (SLM), when the combined petrol-plus-diesel slate is under-recovered by more than R500 million, a slate levy (in c/litre) is charged to claw the balance back. The levy is reviewed monthly.
Because the slate can defer part of a large move, very large recoveries
(roughly |recovery| > 150 c/l) are where a pure
−recovery forecast can under-shoot the published change.
A fixed per-litre tax set by the Minister of Finance in the annual budget (typically effective in April). Recent rates are around 429 c/l on petrol and 416 c/l on diesel. It is a flat tax, not part of the cost recovery — so it moves the price independently of the recovery signal, which is why the April change is flagged separately in the forecast.
The Road Accident Fund levy — a fixed per-litre charge (around 225 c/l) that funds compensation for road-accident victims.
The rest of the pump price is made up of fixed and regulated components: customs & excise duty, the petroleum products levy, the IP tracer levy, wholesale and retail margins, secondary storage and distribution, the zone differential, and pump rounding. Each is itemised in the monthly release's price build-up (Annexure 1).
South Africa is divided into 47 fuel-pricing zones. Each zone carries a transport (zone) differential reflecting the cost of moving fuel inland from the coast, so the regulated price is a few cents higher the further from a port you are.
1A is the coastal reference zone; 9C is the
Gauteng / inland reference zone. The DMPR schedule publishes a level for
every zone code each month.
Kerosene sold for household lighting, heating and cooking. It is regulated
at the wholesale level and carries no fuel levy and no slate — so its
monthly change tracks −recovery almost exactly, even in months
where petrol and diesel are distorted by levies.
The Single Maximum National Retail Price for illuminating paraffin — a single capped retail price that applies nationwide, unlike the zone-differentiated prices for other fuels.
Liquefied petroleum gas (propane / butane) for domestic and commercial use. Its price is set monthly and is not recovery-driven — so it isn't forecast from the daily slates the way petrol, diesel and paraffin are.
Instead it is priced off the Maximum LPGAS Refinery Gate Price (MRGP), quoted in R/ton and c/l, which tracks the Saudi Aramco Contract Price (the international propane / butane benchmark) together with the rand/US-dollar exchange rate.
Prices change on the first Wednesday of each month. The decision uses recovery data up to the Thursday before that Wednesday (the change date minus six days). A cycle therefore runs from the day after the previous decision to its own decision date — about five weeks, not a calendar month.
The average recovery resets at the start of each cycle, so the forecast groups daily slates by the cycle they belong to, not by month. The forecast firms up as the cycle fills and most of the data is already banked.
Definitions are drawn from the CEF / DMRE monthly fuel-price release and the DMPR price schedule — the public sources this site ingests. They are provided for general understanding, not as financial advice. Back to the forecast.