Posted on: 10:07 Sat, 26 Dec 2015



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.”

Source: PunchNg