The Nigerian masses are currently being threatened with the news of an increment in the subsidy paid by government on petrol as it may culminate in an increase in price.
The amount the Federal Government is subsidizing Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), also known as petrol, rose, yesterday, to N9.09 per litre, according to the latest pricing template released by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA.
Specifically, this means that if the Federal Government was to hands-off subsidizing the product and allow market forces determine the price, Nigerians would be made to pay a minimum of N95.09 to purchase a litre of the petrol from Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC) retail stations, and N95.74 per litre from other oil marketers.
This was even as the unending fuel crisis witnessed across the country continued, showing no sign of abating, with some oil marketers blaming the NNPC’s suspension of product allocation to some of them for worsening the crisis.
The PPPRA in its template, released Tuesday, put the Cost plus Freight of imported petrol at N74.83 per litres, with other cost elements hiking the landing cost of the product for marketers to N81.44 per litre. With a distribution margins put at N14.30 per litre, the Expected Open Market price of the product rose to N95.74 per litre.
However, the Federal Government fixed the Ex-depot price, which is the price at which marketers purchase the products from depots, at N76.50 per litre, while the retail price was fixed at N86.50 per litre.
In spite of the looming increase in fuel price from May, a petrol station owner in Abuja, who is member of the Association of Credit Marketers of Petroleum Products in Nigeria (ACMPPN) lamented that members of the association have not been allocated products since March.
The marketer called on the NNPC and its subsidiary, the restructured Pipeline Products Marketing Company, PPMC, to urgently lift the suspension it placed on product allocation to credit marketers if it is serious about ending the fuel crisis.
However, National President of the Association of Credit Marketers of Petroleum Products in Nigeria (ACMPPN), Samuel Nwoga, insisted that its members were not indebted to the NNPC, while he said the group was already in talks with the NNPC with a view of resolving the areas of differences in the best interest of the country.