The federal government on Monday, October 9, debunked claims that Nigeria has restored subsidy for premium motor spirit (PMS) also known as petrol.
President Bola Tinubu had on May 29, this year, during his inauguration as President at the Eagle Square, Abuja, announced the effective end of the subsidy regime.
However, the removal of fuel subsidy has been trailed by serious economic repercussions, which have led to protests from the organised Labour.
Just last week, the Tinubu administration managed an arrangement with Labour, including the implementation of some palliative measures, including a provisional wage increment.
Oil marketers and a section of organised Labour have recently alleged that the government had restored the subsidy, contrary to its earlier resolve, claiming that with the removal of the subsidy, fuel pump price stability, despite fluctuations, is unexplainable.
However, responding to journalists’ questions at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, after a meeting with President Tinubu, Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, said there is no fuel subsidy at all.
He said: “I told you there’s no subsidy whatsoever, we are recovering our full cost from the products that we import. We sell to the market, we understand why the marketers are unable to import. We hope that they do this very quickly and these are some of the interventions the government is doing. There is no subsidy.”
The NNPCL boss also dispelled fears of impending petrol scarcity, saying the country has enough to circulate even as he explained the few fuel queues seen in some parts of the country recently to be a result of a logistics gap in the movement of products from the south of the country to the north and that the issues had been largely sorted out.
According to him, Nigeria has about 1.4 litres of the product, both marine and inland, explaining further that the queues are a result of price differences among fuel stations and that this is one of the manifestations of the market forces, which he described as a good sign
He, however, noted there the scarcity of foreign currency had played its own role in the situation, but further pointed out that the government was already resolving that, adding that the foreign exchange crisis would soon be solved as the market would be stabilized.
Kyari said: “We have seen, in very few states, pockets of very low queues. Not unconnected with the road situation that we’re seeing the number of blockades on our roads, crossing products from the southern depots into the northern part of the country and it takes them a much longer time than they do now, they have to reroute the trucks around many, many locations for them to be able to reach and that created delays and some supply gaps. But that has been filled and we do not see any such problems again.
“Secondly, because of the full deregulation that we have in this sector, marketers are now competing amongst themselves. So you must have noticed some fuel stations with reduced prices by N2 or N3, so customers will naturally run to the places where you have that reduction in prices and that creates panic, because, for those who don’t know why they are doing it, they will think that there’s something wrong happening, or there’s an ominous sign of scarcity or people start queuing up in the fuel stations. Otherwise, there is no challenge. Supply is robust.
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“We have over 1.4 billion litres of product in our hands, both marine and land. Also, there are no issues around the delivery of those products into the land. So there is no fear, nothing to bother about.
“We are also happy that the market forces are now playing out and marketers are competing and of course, there are a few issues we’re engaging them to resolve alongside other agencies of government and critical issues around access to foreign exchange. As you all know, the government is doing so much to ensure the supply of FX into the market.
“We know that this FX markets will stabilize. Currently, the I&E window is around 770 and we know that those inputs that are already happening, the inputs of government today will crystallize and also they will come to an equilibrium position in the FX market and this is a dream of this country.
“So that we’ll have a stable FX market, stable product market where the prices of products will also speak to prices of other commodities. This is already manifesting and we think this is the economic revolution that this country needs.”
