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By Sami Zaptia.
London, 11 January 2017:
The Fuel and Gas Crisis Committee of the National Oil Corporation’s (NOC) Brega Marketing Company is launching a prepaid fuel card to enable Libyan cash-strapped customers to pay at petrol stations. Libya is currently going through a cash-shortage crisis as a result of its acute political, security and economic problems.
These, together with sky-high-inflation, have led to customers choosing to hoard their cash at home rather than depositing them at banks with no guarantee that they would be able to withdraw their money at short notice. Banks have had to impose monthly cash limits in the hundreds of dinars with queues forming overnight outside banks in the struggle to get cash.
To help mitigate this problem, Brega is launching the new initiative of a pre-paid fuel card. Brega has also launched a drive to install POS machines at petrol stations so that customers can pay with their debit cards. However, the prepaid fuel card is meant for customers without bank accounts or debit cards.
The prepaid fuel card was in fact launched by the Libya Oil company four months ago for its own staff and clients, but Brega, in cooperation with Libya Oil, is to rollout the card nationwide.
Customers are able to top-up the fuel card from a minimum of LD 50 up to LD 1,000 by using a certified cheque. A readout machine attached to the fuel pump would deduct the amount of fuel purchased, without any extra charges Brega reports – as well as confirm the balance remaining on the card.
In an earlier statement, Brega had announced that it will reveal the names of petrol stations as and when POS machines are rolled out. This, it reported, will also be followed up by POS machine rollout to cooking gas cylinder retailers.
Equally, in December, Brega had announced that all petrol stations in Tripoli had been installed with power generators so that they are able to pump fuel during Tripoli’s chronic power cuts. CCTV cameras were also installed.
