Indication emerged on Thursday that there may be an increase in the price of petrol.
The indication was the request by the National Economic Council, NEC, for “correct” pricing of petrol in the country.
NEC which is chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has already directed its committee headed by the Governor of Gombe State, Ibrahim Dankwambo, to interface with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to determine appropriate price for the product.
The move it was agreed upon, would curb the prevailing smuggling of the product into neighbouring countries because of the prices it is sold.
While the product is sold at N145 per litre in Nigeria, it goes for about N385 in Chad and N360 in Benin Republic when converted to the Naira.
This is despite the landing cost of N177.
The Governor of Bauchi State, who spoke with journalists on the matter, gave an insight into the deliberation on the product and the possible change in price.
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His words: “The second issue that was discussed was the issue of the scarcity of petroleum product. The problem was addressed by the Group Managing Director of the NNPC. The issue is of course caused by an inter-play of the change rate of the naira and the dollar and the price of crude oil at the international market which affects the landing cost of refined products in Nigeria and in the process makes the operation of the current price regime almost impossible without some measure of nil return for whoever is in the process.
“As at today, most of the independent marketers have stopped importing refined products into Nigeria. It is only the NNPC that has been doing it. And the NNPC has been suffering a lot of set backs, the highest amount of under recovery. By under recovery it means the inter-play between the landing cost of a litre of the PMS in Nigeria and the pimp price of that product. If the product lands at N170 for example and you sell at N145, immediately you know that you have an under recovery of about N25 for each litre of fuel.
“So he submitted his report and the National Economic Council has a committee that has been interfacing with all revenue generating agencies of the federal government under the chairmanship of the governor of Gombe State. That committee has been charged with the responsibility of interfacing with NNPC with a view to determining the correct price for PMS considering the price of the product in especially countries that are bordering Nigeria. Because that is one of the reasons that encourages smuggling of the products to these areas.”
