SARB: refinery closures added 76 billion rand (4.68 billion dollars) to South Africa's import bill in 2021-2024

The study reported by Businessday NG belongs to economists at the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and has been endorsed by Chief Economist Konstantin Makrelov. According to the findings, the cost to the economy of the increase in refined petroleum product imports in 2021-2024 was about 76 billion rand (4.68 billion dollars). Over the same period, the loss of domestic refinery activity cost 5,400 direct and indirect jobs. The study calculates that the share of refined products in total imports was about 25% in 2010-2019, and that had that share been maintained, the oil import bill could have been an average of 6.1% lower over the four years.

According to the same report, the country's global ranking in bitumen imports rose from 123rd in 2019 to 20th; this shows that the closed refineries created external dependence not only in fuel but also in road construction inputs. Businessday NG also reports that if the Sapref refinery were brought back into service, the targeted processing capacity would be about 400,000 barrels a day. Citing a separate study, it notes that the additional fuel import cost in the March-August period was 56 billion rand.

Semafor, reporting the same SARB study, puts the cost at 4.7 billion dollars and writes that South Africa's refining capacity has halved over the past decade and that imported refined products now meet more than half of domestic demand. According to the same source, about 70% of the refined fuel needed across the African continent is met by imports. The difference in the dollar figure between the two sources (4.68 and 4.7 billion) comes from rounding.