The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has insisted that there is no increase in the price of Premium Motor Spirit also known as petrol.
This position contradicts that of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency as shown by the template published on the agency’s website http://pppra.gov.ng/pms-guiding-price-for-march-2021/,
The template, which has since been deleted, announced that the new price of petrol has reached N212.6 per litre.
The ex-depot price is the price at which the product is sold by the NNPC to marketers at the depots.
The NNPC, however, ruled out any increment in the ex-depot price on Friday in a series of tweet via its verified Twitter handle, @NNPCgroup.
“#NNPC Insists No Increase in Ex-Depot Price of PMS in March,” the corporation said hours after the PPPRA released the template,”it wrote.
According to the template which the PPPRA released midnight, petrol is expected to sell at a lower retail price of N209.61 and at an upper retail price of N212.61. Nigerian marketers usually use the upper band for pump price.
The expected ex-depot price, as seen in the template, is N206.42, while the landing cost is N189.61.
With ex-depot price standing at N206.42 per litre, the March template shows that the landing cost for petrol per litre is N189.61.
This development aligns with the NNPC’s initial position which assured Nigerians that there will be no increase in the price of PMS this month.
The NNPC Spokesperson, Dr Kennie Obateru, said this in a statement issued last week noting that the government was not contemplating any increment in the retail price of PMS.
Obateru added that those fuelling the speculation of a possible increase in the price of petrol are greedy marketers interested in what he described as “scathing profiteering”.
He said any such decision would scuttle the government’s ongoing engagements with organised labour and other stakeholders on an acceptable framework for fuel pricing in the country.
On the other hand, oil marketers insisted that selling at the current price of N162-N163/litre was commercially suicidal because the current landing cost is about N174 per litre.
“When all other components in the fuel pricing template are taken into consideration, the appropriate retail price for petrol today at the filling stations should be between N210 and N215 per litre for the marketers to break even and stay in business,” the marketers noted.
