The Federal Government may reduce the pump price of petrol to N85 per litre from January 1, 2016.
The Minister of State for Petroleum
Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, made this disclosure to journalists at the
Port Harcourt Refining Company, Rivers State, after inspecting the
plant.
Asked when the Federal Government would
release the new petrol price template prepared by the Petroleum Product
Pricing Regulation Agency, Kachikwu said that he approved the new price
for the agency on Thursday.
Pressed to reveal when the new price
would become effective, Kachikwu, said “like I said, we have done a
modulation and it is showing us below N87. I imagine that if PPPRA
publishes it today, it will become effective immediately. But the 1st of
January 2016 is when we are looking at.”
He said the new price would be below the
current N87 per litre and it would now convince Nigerians that the
pricing modulation that the Federal Government promised to embark on a
few days ago was not a trick.
He said, “It (the template) is out, I
signed off on it yesterday (Thursday). I imagined that in the next
couple of days the marketers would get advice on that. The nice thing
about the PPPRA, where I signed up on it yesterday is that the price
will be far below N87. So for the first time people will understand that
the pricing modulation I was talking about is not a gimmick. It is for
real.
“We have gone to find out how we will be
able fluctuate this market to reflect what the reality of crude market
is. The objective is that one, we cannot afford to continue to
subsidise. We can’t even understand where those subsidies were going to.
There are a lot of fraud elements in it so we need to cut that of.”
He stated that from the applicable
market realities for the pricing modulation, government discovered that
petrol would sell for either N85 or N86 per litre.
Kachikwu said, “But in applying that
where we landed when we did the analysis for the very first time was
about N85 or N86, so it is below N87. And maybe the first price that
will come will reflect it. That was why Mr. President said that the
price will be N87 for now. And that is what we have in mind.”
