Nigeria will sell a litre of petrol for N85, a reduction of N2 from the official price of N87 from the 1st January 2016.
The Minister of State for Petroleum, Emmanuel Kachikwu, disclosed this to journalists during his official tour of the Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC) on Christmas day.
The Minister disclosed that he had communicated the new petrol price to the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulation Agency (PPPRA) on Thursday.
“If you look at the new PPPRA template that we developed and which I just signed off two days ago, when it is announced you will find out that for now ,and I use the emphatic word of the President for now, the price of the refined product will actually be lower than 87 naira, It will be 85. We will probably announce that in January if the prices hold.
“like I said, we have done a modulation calculation 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 that is when we are looking at.”
Justifying government’s reasons for scrapping the Petroleum Support Fund otherwise known as oil subsidy, Mr. Kachikwu explained that government could no longer afford to subsidize the product following the fraud that has attended its operation.
“What that does for you is that its modulating. If it goes up you move up, if it comes down you come down. So we take away the fact of having to go find funds to pay for these subsidies that we cannot afford. We can’t even understand where those subsidies were going to. There is a lot of fraud elements in it so we need to cut that of.
The second is the earning capacity of the Federal Government is deteriorating by the day with lower prices of crude “, he said.
