Pump price of PMS may automatically not reduce when local production begins, presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the February 25 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo,has said.
While agreeing that it is always better to produce locally, Adebayo said “it doesn’t automatically guarantee lower prices. It guarantees employment, reliability in case of distortion in the market and you have a marginal decrease in cost. Look at other things being produced in Nigeria, their prices are not down. Most of the cassava we consume comes from Nigeria. Why is the price of cassava not falling? We have been producing cement in Nigeria for one decade. When former President Olusegun Obasanjo was everywhere supporting few people who wanted to create a monopoly market or geo-monopoly market in cement, he said once we start producing it, everybody would have cement cheaply.
“Cement has never been cheaper at all. Rather, it is even worse than before. When the government wants to commit your resources to their favourites, they will tell you that let us put our money in the hands of rich private people and you will get good prices along the way. You will see that Nigerian banks don’t charge you more than the foreign banks even though the banks are in Nigeria. The law of economics doesn’t have a brother or sister. Once the person is in the capitalist world and he is trying to maximise his profit, he will sell anything to his own mother at any price. So, price mechanism is just a small part of developmental economics.”