DURBAN – The majority of South African fuel service stations were just barely making it to survive with the significant drop in volumes in the face of the Covid-19 imposed national lockdown.

The Fuel Retailers Associations (FRA) chief executive Reggie Sibiya said that the latest volume drop snapshot survey to FRA members indicated that April 2020 fuel volumes versus April 2019 have dropped by between 80 and 90 percent.

“Some sites though few have shown an improvement to levels around 60 to 70 percent drop with the introduction of the level 4 regulations. Even 60 percent volume drop is not a sustainable picture as the majority of service stations revenue comes from fuel. The snapshot survey shows a similar trend also on shops turnover decline as the fuel,” said Sibiya.

FRA said that they were however not certain as to how many of the people who have been released to work under level 4 actually owned vehicles. Sibiya said that their suspicion was that the majority of people owning vehicles were still at lockdown at home as they had means to work online and through virtual meetings.

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