A publication by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA),\u00a0 Thursday, March 11, of a new price for petroleum products for the month of March has again raised the question of government subsidy on petroleum products. The PPPRA released a template increasing the price of petrol from the current N162 to N212.61 per litre. This immediately threw panic across the country with queues immediately mounting and scarcity throwing in. Following nationwide anger about the increase, the PPPRA immediately withdrew the price increase announcement and the Minister of State for Petroleum resources, Timipre Sylva denied the increase, promising punitive action against those in PPPRA that put out the announcement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the agency soon clarified that the\npublication of guiding prices did not\namount to an actual increase in the price of petrol but was only indicative of\ncurrent market trends. It reiterated that petrol prices are determined by the\nMarket-Based Pricing Regime for PMS Regulations 2020. The Executive Secretary\nof the agency, Abdulkadir Saidu speaking on the issue, added that the current\nprice of petrol will be maintained pending the conclusion of consultations on\nthe matter. Furthermore, the agency also confirmed that fuel subsidy officially\nreturned in February, as the petrol pump price for the month was between\nN183.74 and N186.74 per litre, with consumers paying an average of N170 per\nlitre. It will be recalled that President Buhari\u2019s administration had\nrepeatedly announced the removal of fuel subsidy, to justify the increase in\nfuel prices in the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Insisting that\nthere is no increase in price, Sylva asked Nigerians to disregard the purported\nprice hike. There is however concern amongst economists and business watchers\nthat the PPPRA and government are fiddling with petroleum pricing in the\ncountry and that the government is currently paying huge subsidies on petroleum\nimports amounting to an average of about N60 billion every month, with fears\nthat subsidy spend at the end of 2021 may exceed N1.5 trillion. This would be a\nmajor concern for a country already suffering huge economic decline, low\nrevenues, high debt servicing and unprecedented unemployment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A publication by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA),\u00a0 Thursday, March 11, of a new price for petroleum products for the month of March has again raised the question of government subsidy on petroleum products. The PPPRA released a template increasing the price of petrol from the current N162 to N212.61 per litre. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[262,264,263],"class_list":["post-1967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-federal-government-in-fuel-price-conundrum","tag-fuel-subsidy","tag-petroleum-products-pricing-regulatory-agency-pppra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1967"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1983,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions\/1983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}